


The Dancing Skies of Verath

by queer_cheer



Series: The Adventures of River Song [1]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, Minor Character Death, Original planet, Romance, Some Backstory, Worldbuilding, and river is still in stormcage, basically date night gone wrong lol, but amy and rory are still alive, but don't worry because there's also lots of fluff, lots and lots of angst, not quite sure where this would be in the canon timeline for them, references to river's past, references to the doctor's family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:47:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 22,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21977557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queer_cheer/pseuds/queer_cheer
Summary: In truth, River knew neither one of them was made for the kind of life that left room for brunch dates and dinners at the Ritz. Simplicity just wasn’t in their blood. Whatever part of the brain told most creatures to run from danger had somehow been damaged in the exact same way in both of their heads; maybe it was the lingering aftereffects of childhood traumas and adult disappointments, or maybe it was just the way some silly, strange, damaged people were, but River knew she wouldn’t trade their silly, strange, damaged love for anything in the universe.But a holiday on Verath did sound rather nice.The Doctor and River go for a date on the scenic agricultural planet Verath, but they arrive to find that the rest of the planet's population has vanished without a trace, often mid-activity; cars are abandoned on roadways with no drivers, and the live news broadcasts only empty desks. Hiding in a toy shop, the pair finds a little girl called Remi, who appears to be the last person in the world. But when a mysterious fog sweeps the Doctor away, it’s up to River and Remi to save him -- along with the rest of the planet -- before it's too late.
Relationships: Eleventh Doctor/River Song
Series: The Adventures of River Song [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1582024
Comments: 35
Kudos: 50





	1. The "L" Word

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I'm ten years late to the party, but here I am. Comments and kudos are appreciated! :)

It wasn’t every day that a cute-albeit-broad-chinned Time Lord broke into the most secure prison in the galaxy. It was, in fact, every night, and River Song figured she might just be the luckiest prisoner in Stormcage. 

“You’re late,” she remarked, leaning up against the side of the TARDIS and striking the best pose she could manage in her prison-yard greys. 

“Maybe I’m just early for tomorrow’s run,” he gave her that sweet, devil-may-care look that he reserved for her and her only. “After all, time is relative.” 

River followed him into the box and smiled at the way it felt familiar and warm, and just about as different from a jail cell as it could get. It had the vague and out-of-context smell of old books and a candle just blown out. There was, of course, no reason for it to smell like anything other than electrical wires and the musky cologne the Doctor had picked up somewhere in the markets of Tiaanamat, but the TARDIS rather liked River. And its pilot did, too. 

“You can’t wear that old thing where we’re going,” said the Doctor playfully, giving the sleeve of River’s jumpsuit a gentle tug. He gestured to a black summer dress draped over the console; it was casual and made for comfort, subdued enough for a stroll on the beach, but with enough flair for a night on the town. River grinned. That would do just fine. 

“You spoil me,” she turned to him, expecting a kiss, but he’d already gone off to program the controls. He was always on the move, she thought. Like a shark, whose movement sustained its life; if it stopped, it would go belly-up to the surface without as much as a second thought. She wondered what would happen if the Doctor stayed still, if those childish eyes constantly scanning in search of something to do drifted shut for a nap, or if those spindly fingers fidgeting with whatever was close enough to grab found solace in the pocket of a warm coat. Knowing him, she figured she’d never find out.

“Where to tonight?” She unzipped her jumpsuit and slipped into the dress, only mildly annoyed by the way the Doctor respectfully kept his eyes locked on the screen. Only when he was sure she was properly clothed did he look at her and grin.

“Verath!” He exclaimed.

River blinked. “Bless you?” 

“No, silly, that’s where we’re going! Verath: A lovely little farming planet tucked off toward the edge of Andromeda. It’s the place the old romantics used to write songs about!” he told her, taking her hands in his and dancing. There was no music playing, but River figured there was always some sort of song playing in his head. Usually, she figured it was elevator music, but as he gave her a twirl, she began to consider something more inline with Sinatra. She hadn’t realised how wide her smile had gotten until the Doctor gave her cheek a gentle stroke. 

“Human agricultural settlement, circa 67th century,” he continued, letting go of her to type something into the control panel. “Rolling fields of wild lavender, perfect for picnics. Little cafes with tea and the cute little muffins with chocolate chips in them. And best of all, collisions between gaseous particles in the atmosphere with charged particles released from the atmospheres of the planet’s two suns create an aurora that lights up the sky every night. Like the Northern Lights on Earth, but better. Bigger. More colours.” 

“It sounds lovely, Doctor,” River smiled. “I’ve never seen the Northern Lights on Earth. Can you believe that?” 

“I’d meant to take you!” The Doctor seemed offended. “I couldn’t have predicted--” 

“The lightning storm brought on by the killer androids from Nexus VI. I know, dear. Not your fault.” 

“We did save the world, though,” he cocked his head to the side in careful thought. “And in the long run, I do suppose that’s more special. Any old couple could go off and do the kissing stuff under the Northern Lights.” 

“But only a deeply dysfunctional couple, made up of a thrill-seeking madman and a convicted killer, could save the Earth in time for lunch,” River gave his arm a playful punch, and he took it in stride. 

“Exactly.” 

In truth, River knew neither one of them was made for the kind of life that left room for brunch dates and dinners at the Ritz. Simplicity just wasn’t in their blood. Whatever part of the brain told most creatures to run from danger had somehow been damaged in the exact same way in both of their heads; maybe it was the lingering aftereffects of childhood traumas and adult disappointments, or maybe it was just the way some silly, strange, damaged people were, but River knew she wouldn’t trade their silly, strange, damaged love for anything in the universe.

But a holiday on Verath did sound rather nice. 

*** 

“River Song,” the Doctor lead her out of the TARDIS, his hands over her eyes. “I present to you: Verath at dusk!” 

He removed his hands, and River opened her eyes. It really was everything he’d said and more. 

The TARDIS had landed on the lip of a mountain, and for the miles upon miles beneath it, grassy fields stretched out, filled with a wide array of wildflowers sprouting up from tufts of lush, green grass. In a still pond, she saw reflected the wonders of the sky; flashes of pink and streaks of green raced yellow hues and blue bursts through the cosmos, dancing in a way that that could only have been choreographed by the gods -- if there were any such things. River was not a believer in any thought so comforting, and yet the natural beauty of Verath was almost enough to make her think twice.

“Can I say something silly?” The Doctor took her hand. River squeezed his in return.

“Of course,” she replied, surprised to find herself breathless. 

The Doctor paused and shifted his weight from foot to foot. Always in motion, River thought fondly. Her hyperactive, childish, attention-deficit shark of a husband. 

“When I was a little boy on Gallifrey, I heard stories of this place,” he ran his thumb over her knuckles and let out a contented sigh. “I always dreamt of coming here with someone I loved.” 

Slowly, River turned to him. He wasn’t staring at the aurora, or at the flower fields, or at her. His eyes were dead-locked on his brown suede shoes, and on the pebble he was gently kicking in circles. They’d never said the “L” word before, and it was only just beginning to dawn on her how much she’d wanted to hear him say it. 

The “L” word felt vulnerable and etched in stone, like a vow, but more. Or less. Or maybe less and more all at once. The bottom line was that it was complicated, and though they were complicated people, everyone had to draw the line somewhere. For them, it had been there, on the cusp of commitment. River didn’t think she’d ever said that pesky three-word phrase to anyone, and for all she knew, the Doctor hadn’t either. But he was every so fond of reminding her that there’s a first time for everything.

“Well,” River said, knowing that too long a pause would make the Doctor feel as though he’d overstepped, and he hadn’t. “Have you realised that dream of yours?” 

The Doctor looked at her and smiled in a way that told her absolutely nothing about what exactly he’d meant.

“Look!” He pointed off in the distance. “A little town! I do so love little towns! Maybe they’ve got a cafe. Or maybe a petting zoo! Oi, you think they’ve got sheep at the petting zoo!? Love a sheep!” 

River laughed. “I suppose there’s only one way to find out.”

Excited, the Doctor charged on ahead, down a little dirt road twisting along the mountain’s edge. River followed closely behind him, and it was hard for her not to notice the spring in his step. Did he love her? And if he did, did she love him? She realised then, almost tragically, that she wasn’t quite sure what love was supposed to feel like. A tingle? A sting? She’d always thought it was just one of those things that she’d understand when she got older -- like maths and the reason centipedes exist. 

But when she’d first looked at the aurora above the field -- a celestial light show that the Doctor had dragged her halfway across the galaxy to see -- she felt something coil in her chest, putting pressure around her dried up little heart. The lights were beautiful. Probably the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. But somehow, she knew it wasn’t the beauty of that moment that had put a tear in her eye. It was who she was sharing it with. 

She’d never had the luxury of dreaming about loving her very own Prince Charming as a little girl. Not that she’d want to. Too much patriarchy. Too many assumptions about gender and sexuality and just what exactly a pretty boy could get if he talked a good game and had a big enough sword -- no innuendoes intended. No, she’d much rather be her own hero. But maybe that’s because she always had to be. 

She thought her way down the mountain, and ahead of her, the Doctor was thinking about sheep. He was also thinking about whether or not he should’ve done the whole kissing thing with his wife underneath the aurora, but he didn’t want to think about that, because he knew the answer, and so he just kept thinking about sheep. 

If either of them had stopped thinking long enough to look around them, they might’ve noticed that Verath was suspiciously and uncharacteristically quiet.


	2. The Empty World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life on Verath has come to a standstill, but in the windows of an empty toy shop, River sees something move.

“It’s strange,” said the Doctor. “The pamphlets made it look like a lot of people lived here.” 

They made their way into the little town, and they hadn’t seen a single living creature along the way. (They hadn’t seen a dead creature either, for the record.)

“Maybe people summer here,” River suggested. “Maybe we’ve just come in the off-season.”

“Two suns, maintaining a distance of one astronomical unit away from the planet at any given time; the planet lives in a state of perpetual spring.” 

“Well, so much for that idea.” 

River was starting to get that feeling again -- the kind of butterflies-in-her-stomach, hair-standing-up-on-the-back-of-her-neck feeling that something was wrong. The lights in the shops were on; she noticed a cafe with a little sitting area outside. Wisps of steam rose up from hot cups of tea left untouched on the tables. Half-eaten scones sat abandoned on plates. 

“Do you hear that?” asked the Doctor, pausing briefly and holding his index finger up to his lips. 

River listened, and sure enough, she heard it; music. It was faint and it was old -- _Nothing Can Change This Love_ by Sam Cook, a relic from 1950s America, was it? Briefly, River cursed fate or whatever made strange coincidences fall into place. It couldn’t have been a song about anything else? It had to be about the "L" word?

“It’s the 67th century,” she said in disbelief. 

“Somebody’s got a taste for vintage,” the Doctor followed the cobblestone street as the music drew nearer. River stayed close by, staring into the empty windows of shops that looked otherwise open for business. She caught sight of a television store and grabbed the Doctor’s arm.

“Look!” 

It was what should’ve been the live news on display, but the broadcast showed only an empty news desk. 

“Where has everyone gone?” 

“There,” the Doctor gestured up ahead at a car stopped in the middle of the street. Its lights were on. Its engine rumbled. Music wafted out from its radio. 

“What are the odds that somebody’s inside?” 

The Doctor looked confused, and there was nothing he hated more than being unable to understand something. The closer they got to the car, the more obvious it became that there was no one inside. It was simply abandoned, as if someone had been driving it, listening to music, when suddenly they -- along with the rest of the world -- were snatched away from reality. The Doctor pressed a button on his sonic, and the music stopped.

“Not a fan of the classics?” River teased. 

“Classics are fine, but I need quiet to think.” 

It wasn’t the worst way he’d ever told her to shut up, and so she shrugged and took it upon herself to look around while he thought.

A toy shop. A library. A cafe. A butchery. Lights on. Books open. Tea hot. Meat cut. 

Wherever everyone had gone, she was fairly sure they hadn’t known they were going until they were there. And they must’ve gone recently, because the drinks were still warm. 

It wasn’t possible for a whole town to just vanish. It was an elementary law of conservation of mass-energy; matter couldn’t be created or destroyed. It could only change form. There was the beginnings of a theory caught up in that thought, a terrible and dreadful theory that she ought to have been pleased she didn’t have the time to flesh out. But something else caught her attention -- movement in the toy shop.

“Doctor,” she whispered.

“I’m thinking,” he reminded her gently. He’d taken a seat on the side of the road, tapping his sonic thoughtfully against his temple. 

“Well, I’m seeing,” she quipped. “Someone’s in the toy shop.” 

The Doctor leapt to his feet, and within seconds, he was at River’s side.

“What do you mean?” 

“What do you mean, what do I mean? Someone’s in there. I saw them move.” 

The Doctor pulled out his sonic and pointed it toward the storefront. It seemed strangely loud against a backdrop of silence. A surprised look spread across his face.

“One lifeform inside,” 

“Oi, don’t look so shocked that I’m right,” River huffed.

“No, no, it isn’t that,” the Doctor assured her. “It’s just that, aside from us, that’s the only lifeform registering on this whole planet.” 

River paled.

“Oh.” 

The Doctor took her hand.

“Stay close. It’s possible that whatever’s in there is what sent everyone else away.” 

River nodded. Together, they made their way into the shop. She didn’t understand Verath’s obsession with vintage, but she certainly knew she hated the little woven dolls on the shelves, with their beady black eyes and red-yarn hair. She never did like dolls. It was a strange hang-up to have when you’ve faced alien deathrays with an easy smile, but nevertheless, she shivered.

Something scurried across the aisle up ahead, a small silhouette cast in the shadows. The Doctor’s breath caught in his throat. His hand held River’s just a bit tighter.

“You think it knows we’re here?” 

“Pray it doesn’t,” River replied. 

Behind them, a toy fell off the shelf. River twireled and cursed, her heart jumping into her throat. The Doctor’s free hand grasped his chest as he let out a slow, frightened breath. 

“I don’t like this,” River said. “I’ve got a bad feeling.” 

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Me too.” 

But they both kept going. It never crossed either of their minds that they could, for all intents and purposes, just go. They could walk back up the mountain to their ship and pay one final glance to the mysterious skies over an empty world before leaving forever and never talking about it again, but that just wasn’t how they rolled. 

Movement again. Up ahead. A door swung open and whipped shut. 

“It’s gone into the stockroom,” said the Doctor. “C’mon. We can corner it.” 

Emboldened by some semblance of a plan, the pair quickened their pace and followed the shadowed creature into the back room. There were no lights on back there; just shelves piled high with dolls. River cursed again. 

“Couldn’t have disappeared into a sweets shop, huh?” 

“Look on the bright side,” the Doctor whispered. “It could’ve gone into the butchery.” 

River shuddered. He had a good point. 

The Doctor pressed a button on his sonic once again, pointing it directly at a rubbish bin up ahead. 

“It’s in there, isn’t it?” River whispered. He nodded.

“Jack-in-the-box.” 

“Monster-in-the-bin.” 

“I’ve got to admit, it adds to the anticipation. Now that’s a toy idea. Monster-in-the-bin.” 

River groaned. “Focus, please.” 

“Sorry. Nervous talker.” 

He passed her the screwdriver and let go of her hand. 

“If some terrible monster leaps out and eats me, stun it and run.” 

“That’s your plan?” She shook her head and handed him the device. “I’m going to open the bin. You stun and run.” 

The Doctor pressed the sonic back into her hands.

“No. My idea to come here, my responsibility. I won’t let you get hurt.” 

River tucked the sonic into his pocket. 

“I’m no damsel in distress, sweetie.” 

And the Doctor handed it back to her.

“I refuse to be a widow.” 

River threw it back at him.

“You’d be a widower.”

“Not if I open the bin.” 

“Alright, enough!” River hissed. “This is stupid. We’ll open it together.” 

“Fine,” he conceded. “On three. One.” 

River took a breath. “Two.” 

And together, they finished the count and thrust off the lid.

The stillness was almost anticlimactic. The pair shared a decisive look, and then nodded. Slowly, they leaned over to look inside. 

It wasn’t a monster. It was a little girl in a dirty yellow jumper with her knees hugged to her chest. And she was crying.


	3. The Sound of Wind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When a mysterious little girl talks about strange noises brought in by the wind, the Doctor and River have their first lead that might just tell them what's so very wrong with Verath.

Her name was Remi, and she liked Jelly Babies very much. It was no surprise that she had warmed up to the Doctor so quickly. 

“What’s the last thing you remember?” he asked her, holding out a bag of candies he would insist he didn’t steal. 

“My mum,” Remi sniffled. “I was still inside playing with the dolls,” she pointed up to the doll on the shelf that had given River the willies. “Mum said Papa was waiting in the car, and that it was time to go home. But when I went outside, everyone had gone.” 

She began to cry again, and the Doctor wrapped her in his arms. She buried her cheek in the crook of his neck, throwing her arms around his shoulders. He placed one hand on her back and with the other, he combed lightly through her hair. River took a step back. She was never good with this kind of thing. 

“It’s alright, I know you’re scared, but you’ve got to be brave,” he pulled away just enough to thumb away her tears. “Tell me, Remi, how old are you?” 

“I’m eight,” she said. “I’ll be nine next week. That’s why we came here. Mum said I could pick out a toy.” Remi looked longingly up at the dolls. Without missing a beat, the Doctor reached up and took one, tucking it into her arms.

“Happy early birthday, Remi.” 

“I can keep this?” She held up the doll with wonder, the faintest smile at her lips. 

The Doctor smiled, too. 

“I’ll have the shopkeeper add it to my tab,” he winked and looked up at River, his smile faltering as he sensed her discomfort. Quickly, he turned back to the little girl. “Tell me, Remi, did anything odd happen recently? Anything before everyone went away?” 

She thought for a moment. 

“There were strange sounds,” she said, clutching her doll closer. “I heard them at night.” 

“Strange how? And where did they come from?” 

“They were machine sounds. Beeping, and whirring. I heard them from my house, when the windows were open. They came from the wind.” 

The Doctor looked up at River.

“Wind affects the propagation of sound by refracting its waves,” she said, though she knew he already knew that. She just wanted to be helpful. It was better than standing there looking uncomfortable, after all. “We might be able to find out where the sound came from if we go back to Remi’s house and listen for it.” 

The Doctor nodded. “Remi, can you do that? Can you show us where you live?” 

Remi nodded. “We can take Papa’s car, if it’s still outside.” 

“Perfect!” 

The Doctor stood up and smoothed out his jacket. Remi stayed still.

“Oi, you alright?” he offered her his hand. She took it. 

“Promise me you’ll find my mum and dad?” She looked at him with big, sad eyes and trembling lips. The Doctor looked quickly at River, who was shaking her head, and then back down at Remi.

“I promise.” 

River’s eyes widened. 

As they made their way out of the shop, Remi leading the way, River tugged the Doctor’s sleeve.

“You can’t be sure you’ll find her parents,” she whispered. “Or anyone, for that matter!” 

The Doctor seemed troubled. His eyes were wide and wet. 

“I’ll find them.” 

“But you--” 

“I said I’ll find them, River,” he told her coldly. “ _We’ll_ find them.” 

River sighed. “I’m rubbish with kids. You’re fantastic with her.” 

“Yep,” the Doctor popped the p. “Lots of practice.” 

“What?” 

The Doctor said nothing. They were nearly to the car. 

“Doctor, do you have children?” 

River envisioned a horde of little Time Lords running through the TARDIS. For some reason, they were all wearing bowties. For a short, horrific moment, she wondered if she’d been a step-mum this whole time and he’d “accidentally” forgotten to mention it.

The Doctor let out a shaky breath. Gone was the man who thought about sheep; in his place had come the man who tried very hard not to think about anything at all, because sometimes, a painful thought would weasel its way in. 

“Had.” 

River had never heard a word spoken with more profound sadness. She couldn’t even bring herself to ask a follow-up question. Quite suddenly, she found that she felt sick to her stomach.

At the car, the Doctor had repaired whatever facade had been cracked a few paces back as he buckled Remi into the backseat.

“Okay,” he tousled her hair. “You’ll be my GPS, right?” 

“Right!” cheered Remi. 

The Doctor climbed into the driver’s seat. The keys were still in the ignition. He pressed a button, and the windshield wipers came on. 

“That’s not it,” he muttered to himself. He flipped a switch, and the left blinker came on. “Not there, either.” Another button, and the horn beeped. “Blimey, that’s a good horn!” 

“Doctor, sweetie,” River interrupted kindly. “Do you know how to drive a car?” 

“Yes!” He defended himself a bit too quickly. “I had a magnificent car once. A canary-yellow roadster! I’m just a bit out of practice.” He poked another button and the radio roared to life. Elvis Presley. Jailhouse Rock. 

Alright, universe, she thought. That’s just rude. She was reminded of the cell she'd have to return to eventually, and even though she knew the Doctor would come back again with his magic blue box, strange adventures, and intoxicating secrets, something in her stung as reality pushed its way in.

“Up,” River grabbed his arm and tugged him out of the seat. She pointed at the passenger's side. “You. There. I’ll drive.” 

The Doctor knew better than to argue. He situated himself into the seat, and River was just about to floor it when he said, “Wait!” 

“What?” 

The Doctor reached over and buckled River’s seatbelt. 

“I won’t be a widower,” he told her, offering up that same soft smile that melted her heart every time. 

“I hate you,” she said. 

“No you don’t.” 

And he was right.

***

Remi’s home was a little cottage on the outskirts of town, with a whole lot of farmland that eventually gave itself up to the surrounding woods. Animals grazed in the grass. Strange, River thought, that only human life had gone.

“Sheep!” Cried the Doctor, rushing over to the fluffy creature and dropping down to his knees. River rolled her eyes.

“Doctor--” 

“She says she’s heard the sounds too, Remi,” he stroked the animal’s soft fleece. “Oh, strange sounds.” 

“How can you tell?” Remi asked him.

“Oh, I speak sheep.” 

Remi laughed. She turned to River.

“Do you speak sheep, too?” 

“No, sweetie. But I do speak Gha, the language of a mighty band of space assassins called the Ghox.” 

It was a humble brag, but Remi was a human child, and she walked away from River very, very quickly.

River thumped herself on the head. “What the hell’s the matter with you, River Song?”

The key to the front door was on the car fob, and the Doctor let himself in. It was a house that felt almost instantly like home. Single-story, with a wood stove and French doors leading out the back. A garden bloomed in the yard, with ripe cherries and lemon trees dotted with budding fruit.

A sad look came into his eyes. River wondered briefly what he was thinking about, and made a mental note to ask him about it later. 

“This is my room,” Remi led him into a small chamber with bright pink walls and a bed bearing a princess-themed blanket. 

“It sure is,” said the Doctor. “A nice room at that! And this is where you hear the sounds?” 

Remi laid down on her bed and clutched her doll to her chest, nodding. 

“Alright. River and I will sit here and wait. You tell us if you hear them before we do.” 

Children, he’d learned, have the very special and quite possibly magic skill of hearing the things that adults learn to block out. (And, blocking out boring things that adults often made themselves hear.)

They sat in silence for awhile. At some point, River reached over and took hold of the Doctor’s hand. He looked deeply sad; something was bothering him terribly. He looked up at her, startled, as if he’d been caught. She gave his hand a reassuring squeeze, and he managed a tight smile.

“There it is!” Remi shot up. 

The Doctor and River strained to hear it, but soon, they could; a soft and distant whirring, the occasional beep, the steady grumble of machinery hard at work. 

“There’s no mechanized farms or rovers or anything like that on this planet,” the Doctor explained. “That sound is certainly a lead. We know that sound is only refracted when it's traveling with the wind, and the sonic says the wind is coming from...the northeast. Now computational atmospheric acoustics...a simple topic, really, taught to children your age where I’m from, Remi. Now, taking into things like uneven terrain, upwind, downwind, speed -- the sonic says 7 miles per hour…” He found an Etch-A-Sketch on the floor and wrote out a complex equation, and after it, he drew a smiley face. “The source of the sound is about two miles northeast, and it’s going to be up high and hidden away. Like in a cave on a mountain.” 

Remi blinked, dazed. “How’d you do that?” 

“I’m very clever. Aren’t I, River?” 

“Alright,” River shrugged. She was impressed, but she was always impressed when she was with him. She couldn’t let on, or else he’d never quit. “Let’s go.” 

“I want to come,” Remi said. The Doctor and River both froze.

“I don’t think that’s wise, Remi,” River told her. “It could be very dangerous.” 

“You said I have to be brave,” she looked at the Doctor. 

“Remi, will you give us a moment?” The Doctor took River’s hand and pulled her out into the next room. 

“She shouldn’t come, Doctor,” River said. “It could be dangerous for her. Or she could slow us down. Or both.” 

“She’s all alone,” the Doctor looked at her in disbelief. “She’s afraid for her parents. She doesn’t know where they are! We’re the only other people in the world to her.” 

“You’re being emotional,” River told him cooly. “And when you get emotional, you make mistakes.” 

“Fine,” he conceded, eyes narrowing. “I’ll give you a rational argument since you don’t understand feelings.” 

River was taken aback. He was rarely so cruel. “Oi, that’s not fair!” 

The Doctor ignored her protest. 

“We don’t know why Remi is the only person that wasn’t taken. There’s something special about her, and it might help us later. And it might be worse to leave her alone on a farm by herself,” he gestured toward the back of the house, where the woods began. “Historically, creepy things like to live in the woods. Why are you looking at me like that?” 

River had been staring at him coldly since he’d snapped at her. 

“You say I don’t understand feelings and yet you can’t see when you’ve so clearly hurt mine,” she hissed. “Fine. We’ll bring Remi. But she’s your responsibility.” 

“River…” guilty, the Doctor reached out to her, but River snatcher her arm out of his reach just in time. She poked her head back into Remi’s room and gave her best, most non-threatening smile, which somehow managed to look like a grimace. 

“Dress warm,” she told her. “It’s cold up on the mountain.”


	4. Rule One

Rule One: The Doctor lies. 

It’s all River could think about as they drove toward the mountain. Remi had fallen asleep in the backseat, her doll clutched tightly to her chest. The Doctor had been staring out the window in silence for the last few minutes. Sheepishly, he reached to turn on the radio. River swatted his hand away.

“I’m sorry,” he told her, and he made a face like he’d tasted something sour. “I don’t like saying that.” 

“Trust me, I know,” River huffed.

“But when I say it, I mean it,” He turned to face her. “I’m sorry I said you didn’t understand feelings. And I’m sorry I can’t always be honest with you.”

This was one of those moments where River seriously wondered if he could read minds. If he could, she’d certainly thought some rather impolite things when she’d seen him in a speedo during their last outing in Nice. 

“And,” he went on, bringing River back into reality. “I’m sorry that our date got all messy with whatever this is.” 

“I don’t mind that bit,” River sighed. “Mostly I mind that you don’t tell me the truth. And that you were rude, but I’ll choose to accept your apology for that.” 

“Thank you,” the Doctor smiled. When River didn’t, he looked away. “But I can’t always tell you the things I want to tell you.” 

“I feel like I don’t know you, sometimes.” 

“Yeah,” said the Doctor. “I feel that way about myself sometimes, too.” 

“You don’t have to, you know,” she kept her eyes on the road, but she didn’t have to see him to know he was looking at her. She could feel it, and for a moment, she swore she felt him falter. 

“I can’t tell you everything. Not yet. Not now.”

“Spoilers?” She lifted a brow. He shook his head. 

Agitated, River went on.

“Let me guess; telling me your dark little secrets will bring the entire universe to a shuddering stop and the very fabrics of time will start to unwind and tangle themselves up into a messy little ball of time-yarn, just because you’re so bloody important, at the centre of all creation. Is that it!?” 

The Doctor was wounded. 

“No,” he said firmly. “It didn’t occur to you that some things just hurt too much to talk about?” 

Oh. River felt her anger melt away into guilt. Damn it.

“Maybe I should be the one apologizing now.” 

“It’s alright.” 

“It isn’t.” 

There was a sound outside that shut them both up; it was the unmistakable thump of something heavy landing hard on a grassy ground and digging deep into the dirt. 

“What was that?” 

The Doctor looked out the window, but an inexplicable fog had settled over the land. He could hardly see the road, let alone anything beyond it. 

“If a tree falls in a forest…” 

Despite the way River pressed her shoe into the gas pedal, the car was beginning to slow down. A lot. 

“Why are you slowing down?” The Doctor asked her, looking behind him. “I know you can’t see, but--”

“It isn’t me!” she cried. “The car just won’t go!”

“Oh,” the Doctor unbuckled his seatbelt. “What are the odds that Remi’s father forgot to refuel the tank?” 

Another muddy, muffled thump. The fog seemed to be getting thicker as the car’s engine sputtered and it rolled to a stop. 

“Alright, here’s the plan,” the Doctor said in the kind of tone that made it seem like he really didn’t have a plan at all. “Whatever is out there is coming. I’d wager it’s what stopped the car. I’d also wager that it wants Remi.” 

“Why?” River glanced back at the sleeping child. “Also, that isn’t a plan. Just speculation.” 

The Doctor shrugged. “Unfinished business. It’s got everyone else, and it’s come back to finish what it started. And so we have to keep her safe. That’s priority one.” 

“And the plan? What priority is that?” 

“I’m going to get out and charge the car with my sonic, and then you’re going to go up the mountain and find out what’s making the noise while I stay out here and find out what’s got Verath in such a state,” he gestured to the fog surrounding them. “It’ll be hard for you to see the road, but I’ll put my sonic under the hood on the manual navigation setting. You’ll have to drive the car but it’ll steer you clear of things like trees and cliffs.”

River could’ve slapped him.

“I’m not going to leave you out here alone and unarmed with some sort of fog monster!” 

“Fog monster?” he scoffed. “Be real, River, you know fog monsters only live on Pluto.” 

River groaned. “You’re not--” 

“Do you trust me?” 

River paused. The Doctor gave her a shake. 

“River, we don’t have time. Do you trust me?” 

“I...yes, you know that I do,” she sighed, defeated. His past was as enigmatic and as dark as an old underwater cave, as probably filled with far more fearsome beasts. She wanted to know him, monsters and all, but she didn’t. What is trust in the absence of knowledge? With a pang, River released it was faith.

“Good,” the Doctor pressed a kiss to her temple. “When you go, don’t look back.” 

“You’ll be alright?” 

The Doctor’s smile strained, but he nodded.

“Of course I’ll be alright.” 

Rule one: The Doctor lies.

“You better be,” River called as he rushed out of the car and popped the hood. Her voice shook with what she tried very hard to disguise as rage, but she knew better, and she knew he did, too. “If you die out here, I’ll kill you!” 

With a mighty roar, the car’s engine leapt back to life, just as another thump shook the ground. 

“Go!” The Doctor called. He met River’s eyes for a moment, and the space between them shouldered the weight of words left unsaid. Three words in particular. A short and easy phrase that isn’t really as short or as easy as one might have you think. 

The Doctor stepped out of the way of the car, and River pressed the pedal to the floor. With the high-pitched, protesting screech of bald tires and the wailing creak of a car not made for more than its fair share of running away, she rocketed down the road, watching in the rear-view mirror as the fog engulfed the Doctor and swallowed him whole.


	5. Jakah and the Anti-World

The Doctor feared only two great things: being alone and being unsure. He feared dozens of other small things, like face spiders and cannibalistic acid and, sometimes, the dark and all that found refuge in its shadowed corners. But loneliness and uncertainty were the two greatest horrors in the universe; they took and took and took until there was nothing left to take, and then they took more. It was a sickness. It was a plague. It was enough to drive a man to madness. Maybe he was proof that it had.

He stepped out off the road and into the marshy grass. Maybe it wasn’t so terrible. He couldn’t see a thing. He didn’t have his sonic. The TARDIS was on the other side of the mountain range, and the only other two people left on the planet were speeding away from him while whatever presumably discarded the rest of the population loomed closer.

Alright. Maybe it was so terrible.

“Hello?” he called. “My name’s the Doctor, and visiting hours are over!”

He winced. That sounded better in his head. At least River wasn’t around to hear him say that. He’d never live it down!

In the near-distance, something about the fog changed form. He couldn’t place what it was, but it was enough to catch his attention in his periphery. He turned to face it, and tried his best not to let it show that he felt both alone and uncertain. 

“Oi, what’s with all the fog? Having a bad hair day?” He ran his fingers through his own hair. “I’ve been there! But come off it! Can’t be that ugly. I’m sure it’s not worth all this fuss.” 

Another thump nearly knocked him off his feet. Whatever was coming was close, and big, and probably very, very mean. At least, judging by the disembodied growl that went through him like wind.

“Why aren’t there ever friendly aliens? You, mate, give us extraterrestrials a bad name! Do you know that on Earth, there’s a film called Alien that’s about a big, gross, and deadly space monster? Think it might kill people, but I’ve never actually seen it. Very racist depiction of alien species, you know, because I’ve never met anything that was evil for the sake of it,” he stepped forward, even though every cell in his body told him not to. “No, no, everyone I’ve ever met that was mean...they were mean because they were angry, and they were angry because they were hurt, or scared, or sad, or lost. Anger and meanness, they’re symptoms of something bigger, mate. Something sadder. Something scarier. So if you’re mean, if you’re angry, let me help you!” 

The world around him suddenly vanished, not in a foggy sort of way, but rather, it was just gone. Which he’d learned was rarely a good sign. He was suddenly standing in the absence of space, on negative ground, facing neither up nor down, neither left nor right. 

“Okay,” he muttered, his voice echoing like dots light reflected through crystal. The ground beneath his feet wasn’t hard, or soft, or even there. But he wasn’t floating. Was this what death felt like? He suddenly thought of River, and his heart hammered a little harder.

He wasn’t dead. He told her he’d be alright, and for once, he’d meant it. He wasn’t going to leave it on a bad spot. 

He took a step forward, and suddenly, he was falling. His hands grappled upward for something to hold onto, but there was nothing there, no ledges or footholds, no vines or metal wires. He was falling from nothing into nothing, or so it seemed. How could he fall if there was no up or down? How had down managed to come back in a directionless plane? 

Someone was screaming. It took him a moment to realise it was him.

And then he sat up.

_What?_

“So sorry for the temporary inconvenience,” said a soft voice by his ear. The man hooking an IV into his arm was humanoid, but clearly not human; his skin was hardened like tree bark, and he peered at the Doctor through yellow eyes with cat-like slits. “The memory upload process can be quite disorienting at first.” 

“Memory upload?” The Doctor slurred. He felt tired, as if he’d run a marathon. 

“Mhmm.” 

“Where am I? Who are you?” 

“You are on our spacecraft. My name is Jakah. I am the chief medical officer aboard this ship.” 

“Ship?” 

The Doctor looked around. Everything was white and clean, with monitors beeping and empty beds tucked up against walls. He recognised it as a starship’s sickbay, and it seemed to double as the head doctor’s office space.

“We’ve since learned that you’re not of this world, and therefore, the general has suggested we let you go. He says our conflict is not with you.”

“Conflict?” 

“Does your kind speak only in short questions?” Jakah cocked his head to the side. It sounded like he might’ve been chiding him, but after the Doctor took a moment to take it all in, he realised he was serious.

“No, no,” said the Doctor, rubbing his head. “I’m just a bit dazed, that’s all. Were you that creature down there?” 

“That would’ve been our retrieval pod. We were looking for someone else, and seemed to scoop you up by mistake. A little girl. Perhaps you’ve seen her.” 

The Doctor gave him a hardened look. “You’ve seen my memories, Jakah. You tell me.” 

“You’re mistaken,” Jakah told him. “We do not see the memories we download. They’re processed directly into the Machine, and saved for later. We can choose to play them, should we desire to do so, either remotely or by accessing the Machine on Verath.” 

Maybe that explained the mechanical sounds Remi had heard. If it was only a supercomputer holding memories, at least he knew he hadn’t sent River barreling toward a bomb. (There was still the chance she’d find a way to blow it up.)

“What are you up to?” The Doctor’s vision blurred in and out of focus, and as he tried to stand, Jakah put a hand on his chest. 

“You should not move. We mistakenly assumed you were human, and gave you medicine to sedate you. But we’ve since learned you are not, and we’ve administered an antidote to correct our mistake. But I believe you’ll be weak for a bit.” 

“How long was I out?” 

“Only minutes.” 

“Good, good,” the Doctor muttered. There was a question on his mind, but he couldn’t quite place it. “You said something about conflict. Are you at war?” 

Jakah shook his wooden head. “No. General Faj says we’ve already won.”

“You haven’t,” the Doctor laid back down, his head spinning. He heard Jakah shift uncomfortably. “You see, Jakah, war has no winners. Just a side that loses less.”

“You are a soldier.” It wasn’t a question.

The Doctor sighed and shut his eyes. “I was, once. I’ve been a lot of things. Tinker, tailor, soldier, spy. But now, I’m the Doctor.” 

“We are both healers, then,” said Jakah. “What were you doing on Verath?” 

“On holiday with the wife,” the Doctor smiled. River Song. His wife. The most lovely girl in all the universe. And the most deadly. What a combo! “Wanted to see the lights in the sky.” 

“They are beautiful, aren’t they?” 

“Mhmm,” the Doctor felt himself drifting to sleep, but the thought of River stirred something in him, something he had to remember. Stay awake. Stay awake. Think. Remember. 

He sat up again. Jakah stood by, cautious.

“I have a question,” 

“What is it?” 

“I haven’t thought of it yet. Give me a moment. Question. Where, what, when, how, who, why. Where am I? A sick bay. On what? A ship. When? Only a few minutes later, time is alright. How? Transport pod. Who? Jakah. So that leaves us with...why? Why do you need to find a little girl on an empty planet?” 

The question clearly made the medic uncomfortable.

“Have you seen her?” 

“No, no, my turn with questions. Let me go again. Question words. I love a good question word. Where are all the people that ought to be there? You put their memories in the thought bank, eh?” 

Jakah nodded. 

“And where are their bodies?” 

“In cryosleep.” 

“What is the thought bank for?” 

“You really shouldn’t--” 

“Oi, come on, Jakah, you can’t make a whole planet vanish and get surprised when people start asking questions.” 

“It’s a depository,” he groaned. It seemed as though he’d been eager to tell someone. Maybe it had been eating him away -- a termite in the soul, or so to speak. “We’re downloading the things that make them...well, them, into the bank, and we’ll reupload them to the decoys once they’re all in place.” 

The Doctor swallowed. Question words.

“When?” 

“Tomorrow.” 

“How?” 

“A big button,” Jakah laughed miserably. “Anticlimactic, isn’t it?” 

“Who?” The Doctor’s mouth was dry. He felt a bit dizzy. If he didn’t keep it concise, he’d pass out before he had all the answers he needed. “And why?”

Jakah sighed and pulled up a chair to sit at the Doctor’s bedside.

“You’ve got two hearts and a very annoying tendency to ask hard questions in very simply ways. I know that means you’re a Time Lord. I also know that the planet Gallifrey was destroyed, and thus it follows that you, Doctor, are in exile. You’ve got no homeland to return to, do you?” 

A pool of sadness sat heavy in the Doctor’s chest. He didn’t say anything, but his silence said it all.

“And so,” Jakah continued. “Perhaps you’ll understand when I tell you that my people are not a savage bunch. We are not animals, prone to outbursts of violence, but we are not trees, prone to passive stillness. We are the Verathians, a peaceful race in painful exile. The planet below is our home.” 

Stunned, the Doctor looked at him, and in his yellow eyes, he saw something he understood. He couldn’t place it. But he knew it. 

“But the Verathians negotiated a treaty with Earth when the humans first wanted a colony,” the Doctor’s eyes narrowed in thought. “You lot lived together in peace and harmony. What happened?” 

Jakah smiled sadly and shook his head. 

“History is written by those who win, Doctor. The humans won. There never was a treaty,” He sighed. “The humans came in with guns and weaponry and slaughtered the weak. They took the strong as prisoners and forced them into labour camps. Those who escaped knew that for as long as Verath was under Earth rule, we could never return. The Earth, in the 67th century, has some of the largest weaponry in the solar neighbourhood. To go to war with them would mean the pointless death of millions.” 

“I’m sorry,” the Doctor reached out to take Jakah’s hand. He gave it a squeeze, and wondered briefly if he could feel it underneath the bark-like hardness. “I didn’t know. I’m so sorry that happened to your people. And that no one ever knew about it in time to stop the humans.”

Jakah stood up. 

“It is in the past. Many generations have been born in exile. But our generals believe that the decoy plan will work; the Verathian people can change their form at will, if we possess enough information about the host. Thus, the memories and thoughts of the humans below shall be implanted into the minds of the Verathian decoys, and they’ll be able to return peacefully to their homeland, wearing a clever disguise.” 

“But Jakah,” the Doctor sighed. “What about the humans? Their bodies. Living, breathing bodies. They aren’t the people that hurt you. They’re the children of those people’s children, and I’d wager they have no idea. I’d wager they believe in the treaty, if they even know anything about you at all. Maybe it was kept from them. Maybe if you talked with them...” 

Jakah’s shoulders tensed. “They will be relocated. That decision is not up to me. Or them. Their generals remain on Earth, and to open communication would require them to publicly acknowledge that the treaty never existed in the first place.” 

The Doctor knew he had to think fast. Jakah was right; Earth generals would never agree to that. The Earth went through a tricky time during the 67th century; it was a military power with too many mouths to feed and not enough ways to feed them. And so, agricultural colonies like Verath sustained life. But apparently, at a horrid cost.

Tomorrow, Jakah said, is the day would all begin. The Doctor understood Jakah’s uncertainty, and he understood the plight of the Verathian people. It was their home first. They were entitled to it. But the Doctor had heard of military men and their penchant for relocation -- the only place they ever relocated anyone to was a graveyard. And he couldn’t let those people die, either. It couldn’t have been just a simple date to a pretty planet. Of course, something big had to happen. It always did.

“Have you ever been to Verath, Jakah? You said the auroras are beautiful.”

I, myself, left the planet as a young boy. General Faj looked after me.” 

“What about your parents?” 

Jakah turned away. “They went missing when I was just a boy. I assumed them dead.” 

Emotion swelled in the Doctor’s throat. He tried his best to swallow it down, but it was lodged there, a permanent fixture in the conversation. 

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I lost my parents when I was just a boy, too. Time Lords, you know. Missing. I know I’ll never know what, or where, or when happened to them. I only hope it was gentle.” 

“That must ache.” 

“Of course it aches,” the Doctor told him firmly. His voice trembled. Grief, he thought. That’s something he’d gotten rather good at ignoring, but it was there, now. He couldn’t shut it out. “But right now, there’s a little girl down there who’s aching in the exact same way, Jakah,” he continued. “She’s lost her mum and dad, who are somewhere on this ship in cryosleep. We can’t change our own pasts. We can’t bring back the people we’ve lost. But we can change her future. We can give her back her parents.” 

Jakah nodded, but turned quickly and barked out a rough, “No.” 

“Why not?” 

The emotion had drained from Jakah’s face. Clearly, the Doctor wasn’t the only one well-skilled in the art of compartmentalisation. “The child must be brought aboard.” 

“I’m sorry, Jakah, I truly am. But that won’t be possible.” 

“And why is that?” 

“Because there’s a woman down there -- a very brave and strong and remarkable woman -- who isn’t going to let that happen.” 

A sliding door whipped open, and in it came a man who looked similar enough to Jakah, but his face was hardened, and not just because it was made of wood. He wore a decorated military uniform and a permanent scowl. His arms were crossed behind his back. When he spoke, his voice boomed so loudly it made the Doctor’s head hurt.

“This is our prisoner?” 

“Yes, General Faj.” 

“Oi, nepotism,” murmured the Doctor.

“He knows where the little girl is.” 

General Faj circled the Doctor like a shark eyeing its prey. 

“Won’t he tell?” A request said sweetly, gently, softly. But the Doctor knew the type of men that became generals, and they were many things. Sweet, gentle, and soft, however, were not among them. 

“He won’t,” said the Doctor. 

“Unfortunate,” General Faj shoved the Doctor down roughly onto the medical bed, his hand pressed against his throat. He didn’t squeeze, but if he did, the Doctor would be dead in seconds. 

“General” said Jakah, almost urgently. “We mustn’t kill him.” 

“I won’t.” Faj smiled as the Doctor struggled against his grip. “Prepare to induce his memories.” 

The Doctor watched from the corner of his eye as Jakah prepared a syringe, and he felt panic start to settle in his gut. Maybe he shouldn’t have told River he’d be coming back. His parents had said the same thing, and there was still a part of him that was waiting, even after all those years. 

No, he firmly decided he shouldn’t have told her that at all. But he should’ve told her something else -- something hard and painful to say, a three-word phrase that began with him and ended with her, and in between the two, the most fearsome word in the universe. 

Jakah pressed a needle into the Doctor’s arm, and suddenly, it felt as if he was on fire. No...he’d been on fire before, and this was certainly worse. This felt like he was the fire, from the inside out, burning and churning and boiling and melting. He opened his mouth to scream, but he was suddenly back in the negative space, amid the nothing, standing in a world that was wordless and still. 

***

When River had shot something for the very first time, she had to hold the gun with both hands, because it was too big for her to hold with just one. 

She hadn’t blinked as she shot the deer dead. She was not hunting. She was training. Training, of course, for the day she’d kill the Doctor. 

But that night, she’d had a dream that the deer came back. It hadn’t come to hurt her, or to haunt her, or to seek revenge. It had come to ask her why. And she couldn’t give it an answer.

But that was who she was, or is, or will be. (Tenses, for time travelers, never quite added up.) She was a killer who never had a reason, who never needed one, because the universe is big and cold and cruel and when something innocent dies, it was almost always for no reason at all.   
In the 20th century, an English philosopher by the name of John Hicks would talk -- had talked, is talking -- about theodicy, and what he’d call pointless evil. The deer who dies -- died, will die -- alone in the forest would be killed simply because it had been in a very wrong place at a very wrong time. A victim of terrible circumstances. A victim of River Song. 

She’d been no bigger than the little girl River watched through the rear-view mirror, sleeping in the back of her (stolen) car, in her yellow jumper, denim overalls, and pink trainers. She was clutching her (stolen) dolly close; that was the hard bit, the dolly. River hated it. She hated, and she didn’t know why. She hated its beady eyes, its red yarn hair, its neat little denim dress and its flat-felled seams. It looked at her like the deer had looked at her, with eyes that were empty and ignorant, yet still somehow so full of something she couldn’t name. Was it life? Was it innocence? Was it hatred? 

River decided quite pointedly that she hoped it was hatred.

“Are we there yet?” Remi stirred in the backseat. River shifted quickly, doing her best to pretend she hadn’t been staring at her, that they hadn’t reached their destination minutes ago.

“Yes, we’ve just arrived,” River said coldly. 

“Where’s the man? The Doctor?” Remi looked around, upset. 

“He’ll be back,” River unbuckled her seatbelt, tucking the car keys into her pocket and popping open the door. “He had some business he had to take care of. C’mon. Don’t wander off.” 

Hesitantly, Remi slid out of the car. They were parked at the base of a cave, high up on the lip of the mountain. It was still too foggy to see much beyond the cliffside, but the air was starting to clear. River hoped that meant the Doctor was doing well, wherever he was. 

From the inside of the cave came the faint but steady sound of a computer thinking hard; beeping, whirring, the same noises Remi had heard from her bedroom when the wind blew just right.

“We aren’t going in there, are we?” Remi wrapped her arms around herself, pouting at the thought of having to go someplace that looked so dark and so cold. 

“I am,” River opened up the hood of the car to unattach the sonic. It had come in handy so far, and she was sure it would again. “And I’d suggest you did, too. It isn’t safe out here.” 

Remi glanced nervously between the cave entrance and River. 

“Is it safe in there?” 

“Almost certainly not,” River told her, only realising after the fact that she probably should’ve given that thought another go before it came out of her mouth. “But, there’s power in numbers. We’ll be fine.” It was a feeble attempt to rectify the worries of an eight year old.

“I wish the Doctor was here,” Remi whimpered. “I don’t want to go in there, and he wouldn’t make me!” 

River groaned. “We’re on a bit of a tight schedule here, kid. We really don’t have time for a tantrum. Now come on. Into the cave.” 

Remi shook her head and took a step back. 

“I’m not going in there! It’s where the sound came from!” 

In a fit of rage, River marched over to her and knelt down, grabbing either of her shoulders.

“Now listen, Remi, I am not a patient person. I am actually a very impatient person. And I don’t like to ask questions more than once. You have to understand that I’ve got to keep you safe, and if that means dragging you, kicking and screaming, into a weird dark cave with some sort of loud machine in it, then that’s just what that means!” 

Her voice had gotten progressively louder as she spoke, and by the end, she was shouting. Why was she shouting? She knew she shouldn’t shout, and she regretted it as tears welled up in Remi’s eyes.

“Oi, alright, kid, don’t--” 

“I hate you!” Remi sobbed, swatting away at River’s hands. She crossed her arms and turned her back. 

“Yeah,” wounded, River straightened up. “So does most of the galaxy. C’mon. Cave. Now. Don’t dawdle.” 

She stalked toward the cave’s entrance, pausing only to make sure she heard the stubborn sound of small feet following after her. Sure enough, a miserable, bleary-eyed Remi stood at her heels, and she glared when River looked down at her. 

River took a breath and walked in. She had the feeling that facing whatever sat within the bowels of the mountain cave somehow wouldn’t be the most challenging part of the day.


	6. Mother

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor is trapped in the anti-world, forced to face his darkest memories and judgements, while River and Remi find danger lurking in the cave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year!! And, perhaps more importantly, Happy Day-That-Doctor-Who-Season-12-Comes-Out! I'm working on a River/13 story, so keep and eye out for that haha!

It wasn’t often that the Doctor had nightmares, but when he did, they were always the kind in which he was running, but going nowhere. Running, until his legs ached and his hearts hammered hard against his ribcage. He could’ve easily believed he was dreaming, then, but when he pinched his arm, it hurt, and when he shut his eyes and concentrated very hard on waking up, he couldn’t. 

“Not a dream,” he told himself, reaching for his sonic and finding instead an empty pocket. “Ah. Right. I’d never not have my sonic in a dream. Rookie mistake, that.” 

He stopped and caught his breath. He was surrounded by an emptiness cut from the fabric of the universe, woven of the darkness that came before the advent of light. It was a world in which the laws of space and dimensionality were merely suggestions, and while that wasn’t exactly anything new, it felt decidedly different. Sinister, maybe. Hopefully not. But maybe. 

“So, I know I’m on a spaceship traveling somewhere near Verath,” the Doctor said to himself. “But maybe that’s where my body is. My mind is being searched through like a dusty old set of papers, or an encrypted file on a desktop computer. They’re looking for information of the girl, but I can’t give them that. What do you do when you’ve got something on your computer that you don’t want others to find?” He paced. This was not a problem he’d been faced with before. “You hide it. You encrypt it. Password protected. But I can’t password protect my memories. I haven’t the time. Plus, what if I accidentally locked the memory of the password behind the password and couldn’t remember it?” His head was beginning to hurt again. 

“Alright. No password. So what do you do if you’re in a pinch and you’ve got a classified file pulled up on your computer and someone comes in and looks over your shoulder? They can’t see it, no, it’s classified, it’s dangerous, it’s personal. You have to open up another tab, distract them, hide the first tab in a jumbled mess of other windows, websites, browsers, chatrooms.” The Doctor took a breath, his eyes glazing over. There were a lot of monsters stored in his memory, many of which were almost certainly demons of his own creation. He had to unleash them all, open up all those locked little boxes he’d buried in the deepest throes of his mind. And there was enough in there to craft a horrid, violent universe from scratch.

“I’ve got to think,” he said. “Think about what? Just think. Don’t stop thinking. Don’t think about River. Don’t think about Remi. Keep them safe, safe is good. They are a needle in a haystack in my head. Good luck, Jakah! Good luck, Faj!” He cried out, a devious grin at his lips. “Fortunately for me, I’ve gotten rather well-practiced at repressing my memories!” 

“Look at you!” A voice called out. There might not have been a concept of direction in this strange, transcendental space, but he was almost sure the voice came from behind him. He turned around. He was facing forward again, somehow, and in front of him stood a woman. She was old, but not too old, and tall, but not too tall. Her hair was red, but not too red, and pinned up into a bun that was neat, but not too neat. She was perfectly moderate. Perfectly balanced. Perfectly horrid. 

The Doctor recognized her immediately, and it was suddenly quite difficult to breathe. 

“You’re all grown up,” she took a step closer, and stood right in front of him. She’d been a good hundred feet away, but things got tricky when dimensionality started to rust. 

The woman reached out to touch his cheek, and he shivered; her hands were as cold as death. “All grown up, and very, very frightened. I suppose some things never change.” 

“You aren’t real,” he told her. “You’re in my head. I’m thinking about you to stop myself from thinking about anything else.” 

She smiled knowingly. “Just because something is in your head doesn’t make it any less real, does it? Feelings are in your head. They’re real, aren’t they? And so are nightmares, and daydreams, and those troublesome intrusive thoughts that come along every once and awhile.”

The Doctor opened his mouth to speak, but quickly shut it. Tears formed in his eyes, and his lip began to tremble. 

“You left,” he accused. “What kind of mother leaves her son? You don’t just get to opt out of your responsibilities and go gallivanting all around the universe while your child sits awake at night waiting for you to come home!” 

The woman smiled coldly at him and stepped away.

“What happened to _your_ children, my boy?” Her smile twisted into something awful, her face contorting. He let out an involuntary sob and fiercely shook his head, pressing his hand against his lips to stop them from quivering.

“Argue with me all you like; you know as well as I do that you’re arguing with yourself,” Mother went on. “Everything here is a projection of your fears, your guilt, your pain. You tell yourself your mother was a kind woman who loved you very much, and that she got lost on a trip she hadn’t thought would take her long at all,” Mother clicked her teeth and shook her head, demeaning the very thought.

“There’s a part of you that’s still that frightened little boy, staring out his window and imagining that Mummy and Daddy were out there somewhere desperately searching for a way back home. For a way back to you,” she continued, stepping closer to the Doctor. With each step, she contorted more and more, her limbs stretching out like putty, her teeth sharpening. “But there’s a part of you that hates them for ever leaving at all, a part of you that pictures Mummy and sees this: A monster. Yes, my love, this is all in your head. But it’s still very, very real.” 

The Doctor turned to run, but there it was again, that nightmarish trope; he wasn’t going anywhere. The emptiness around him stayed just as empty and just as still, except for the space that Mother took up. That space seemed less than empty, almost as if it had never been there at all, but there it was, lit up red like a button you should never, ever press. The Doctor dropped to his knees, and was stunned by how horribly cold the ground felt, even though his trousers. He doubled over, crying hard into his arms. 

_Keep thinking, keep thinking, keep thinking. Let yourself spiral. If you spiral, it’ll take them longer to find River and Remi. Do it for them. Do it for them._

“I was a human girl and your father was a Time Lord. He offered me the universe. How could I say no?” Mother laughed, a horrid and shrill sound that bounced off the farthest wall of infinity with a tinny clank. “Do you ever wonder where your father is, if I’m here?” 

Suddenly, the ground was made up of mirrors, and the Doctor was peering down into the eyes of his own reflection. Only they weren’t his eyes. They were older. Colder. Darker. Sadder. His face was not his face. There were age lines on his forehead and scruff on his chin, but when he touched his own cheek, it was smooth. 

“You are your father’s son,” Mother hissed. “Always running, high on adrenaline and sustained by the idea that everything is temporary. You go through people like you ought to go through clothes; picking out whichever one best suits you on any given day. You know the risk you take in letting them travel with you. How many have died? How long is it until something terrible happens to Amy? To Rory? To River Song?” 

_Don’t think of River. Don’t give them the gateway in._

“You can’t even tell your wife you love her, not because you’re afraid she won’t say it back, but because you’re afraid that she will. And then what? You’re locked into something, and you’re afraid of permanence. Afraid of forever. Afraid of being loved, because what kind of person could love the kind of boy that a mother walks away from?” 

She was close to him, so close that he could feel her breath on his cheek, and it smelt like sulfur. She let out a scream that brought with it a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder. Loud, loud, so desperately loud; it made the Doctor’s ears ring. He covered them with his hands and curled up on the ground, but the sound was coming from inside him. It was all in his head.

Then as quickly as she had come, she was gone. The anti-world was as still and as silent as it had been when he’d arrived, and the ground was just a ground once again. 

The Doctor started to pick himself up, clambering to his knees and wiping his cheeks on the edge of his twill sleeve. He was a proper mess; bowtie sideways, hair skewed, cheeks pink and wet and blotchy. His breath came out in anguished huffs caught halfway between sobs and sighs of relief.

He was not a spiritual man. He’d seen too many false Gods in his time to believe that there could ever really be the real thing. But if he was just a little more inclined, he would’ve called this place Hell. Hades. Tophet. The list of names was endless, but the misery had to have been the same no matter what anyone felt like calling it.

A sound started to brew, slow and deliberate, as if something was thinking and its gears were turning, as if whatever controlled this anti-world was starting to hone in on his thoughts and pick something else out to conjure up. He sat up straight, eyes wide, damp, and puffy. 

No.

Behind him, children were singing London Bridges.

***

The cave was much deeper that River had thought it would be. She’d hoped it would be more of a nook than a cave, not too deep, not too dark, not too difficult. But she really should’ve known better. Nothing was ever as easy as she’d hoped. And her brooding passenger was making it all the more challenging.

In one hand, she held the sonic set to its torch setting, and in the other, she reluctantly held Remi’s wrist. 

“We’ve been walking forever,” Remi complained. 

“It’s been ten minutes, kid.” 

“When is the Doctor coming back?”

River’s breath caught in her throat. Finally, she thought. A good question from the kid. She didn’t have an answer, and so she said nothing. Evidently, that was worse than saying the wrong thing, because the next thing she knew, Remi was crying again.

“I’m scared, River, and I want my mum!” 

“Oi, alright,” River crouched down in front of her, holding the torch in between them. It cast their faces in the same pale glow, illuminating the tears on Remi’s cheeks. River imagined the Doctor would brush them away, and so that’s what she tried to do. It was an awkward and uncomfortable gesture; the moment River’s thumb touched Remi’s cheek, she winced, and River hadn’t the slightest clue why. Maybe it was the same reason that dogs always barked and growled when she passed them by, but yapped happily at everyone else. Maybe children were actually a lot like animals, namely in that they could sense certain things. Dark things. Bad things. Sadly, River lowered her hand away from Remi’s face and tucked it firmly into her pocket. 

“I’m going to tell you something,” River said. “We haven’t a lot of time, so I’m going to have to be quick, but I’m going to tell you something that the woman who brought me up told me when I was around your age. Alright?” 

Tearfully, Remi nodded. 

“Alright. She told me that there are two kinds of people in the universe: There are the people who get afraid and the people who get very, very good at playing pretend. If a monster was coming down that corridor back there, who do you think it would swallow up first? You, who is afraid, or me, who is trying very hard to pretend I’m not?” 

Remi sniffled, and shook her head. She didn’t know. Of course she didn’t know. She was just a little girl. She wasn’t a warrior. She wasn’t training for anything. She was perfectly ordinary, and River was finally beginning to understand why she hated her dolly so very much. It represented that perfect ordinariness, and all the innocence that came with it, and it represented everything River hadn’t been allowed to have.

“Forget that bit,” River took a breath, and was shocked to feel something wet drip onto her hand. She touched her own cheek, and it was damp. Well, that was certainly new. “Listen, Remi, what I’m trying to tell you is that there are very bad things out there, and the best way to beat them is to never let them know that you’re afraid. Because afraid is so terribly weak and small and silly. It stops you from thinking properly. It stops you from being able to make difficult choices. And I’m so very sorry, but the day will come where no one is there to think and decide for you. When no one is there to help you. You’ve got to be brave enough to save yourself.” 

Remi looked at River long and hard.

“Your mummy told you that?” 

River felt as though she’d been punched. “No. Yes. Well, the woman who brought me up, she did. Wasn’t my mum. Listen, it’s complicated and we don’t have the time for this.” River was frustrated, and she didn’t know why. And that made her even more frustrated. It was a vicious cycle. She stood up and yanked Remi along. “We’ve wasted enough time with this nonsense. Come along, now.” 

Remi watched her with an intensity that River didn’t like. She’d rather face a dozen monsters than one contemplative little girl, and she wondered briefly what that said about her as a person.

She couldn’t wonder for very long, because the sound of something moving behind them cut through the otherwise steady quiet.

“What was that?” Remi pulled herself closer to River. “A monster?” 

“Probably,” River held out the sonic, scanning. No life forms. Well, she figured that meant one of two things: either the sound had been a trick of the cave, or whatever was coming up through the dark behind them wasn’t alive. If experience was any metric, she was willing to bet on the latter. 

And then the cave fell into motion.

Something grabbed River from behind, wrapping itself around her waist and thrusting her off her feet. She yelped, dropping the sonic and immediately cursing herself for it. 

“River!” Remi cried. 

“Get the torch!” River told her. Remi obeyed. 

River couldn’t see what had her in its hold, but it was big and strong, and it was squeezing. Hard. She felt her ribs strain under the pressure of its metal grasp, and when she tried to take a deep breath, her lungs burned in protest and she quickly gave up. 

It was holding her about five feet from the ground, but it felt higher than that. She could see Remi, holding the sonic and crying, and she could see as far as the sonic’s torchlight could reach. But beyond that, it was only darkness. She was cold. She felt alone. Fitting, she thought miserably. This is always how she thought she’d die. The robot arm was a bit of a stretch, but the darkness was right. And the cold. And the lonely.

No. 

She wasn’t going to die in front of Remi. She wasn’t going to be a trauma on the conscious of a little girl. Lord knew she had enough for the both of them.

And then she heard it; the sound of something hard hitting the base of the robot. She looked down to see Remi holding an armful of rocks, the sonic tucked into the front pocket of her overalls with her doll.

“C’mon, monster!” Remi shouted through her tears. “Let her go!” 

“Remi!” River cried. “What are you doing!? Get out of here! Run!” 

She threw another rock, and it River right in the forehead.

Alright. She probably deserved that.

Remi threw another stone, and by sheer luck, it hit something important. River couldn’t see what it was -- she couldn’t see most of whatever was holding onto her -- but there came the familiar electric hiss of some vital part being broken, and then River was falling. 

She hit the ground at the exact time the robot powered down, and she scrambled to her feet, ignoring the lack of air in her lungs or the way her scraped palms and bloodied knees burned. 

“You stupid girl!” She grabbed Remi, frantic and horrified, pulling her into a hug. “You could’ve been killed!”

To her shock, Remi hugged her back.

“Your not-mum was wrong,” she said. 

River pulled away. “What?” 

“She told you that you had to save yourself when you’re in trouble. But she was wrong. When you’ve got friends, you save each other. Like when Jordy Walker was picking on my friend Emma Hayes at school and I made him stop.” 

River stared at her blankly. Well, this was a development. She felt like crying, but she promised herself she wouldn’t.

“Give me the torch and put down the rocks.” 

Remi did as she was told. River took the sonic and used it to scan the machine.

“What is that thing?” Remi asked. “Was that what makes the computer noises we heard?”

“I doubt it. I’d say this was some sort of security guard.” 

River approached it was a hunter’s caution, crouching near it and giving it a scan with the sonic. “Verathian technology.”

“What’s a Verathian?” Remi crouched beside her. 

“What do you mean? They’re probably your neighbours. Friends. You go to school with them, probably,” River looked at her, and Remi’s face was blank. “Oi, the Verathian-Human Accord. A peace treaty signed some 200 years ago? Ringing any bells?” When Remi shook her head, River groaned. “Don’t you pay attention in history class?” 

“We’ve never learned about anybody called the Verathians. Only humans have ever lived here. The planet was empty when they came and discovered it.” Remi insisted. “And history’s my best subject!” 

“Well,” River stood up. “Maybe not knowing isn’t on you, then. Maybe it’s on your teachers. Or your government. C’mon.” 

“You said the monster was a security guard,” Remi swallowed. “What’s it guarding?” 

“Good question,” River said. “We’re going to find out.”

River held out her hand expectantly. Without hesitation, Remi took it, and the pair walked on. River couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d learned something, though it would take her a little while to understand exactly what it was.


	7. The Fall

“Have you located the girl?” General Faj entered Jakah’s lab, and the air got a bit thicker. 

“N-Not yet, General,” Jakah stammered. “It’s like searching through a million files that are constantly being renamed and moved around.” 

General Faj glanced over at the bed where the Doctor was laying. He’d been strapped down by the wrists and ankles, and where the sleeves of his twill jacket rode up, General Faj could see the bright red of new rope burns carved into his arms. He was drenched in sweat and his cheeks were damp.

“He’s giving you the runaround, is he?” General Faj huffed, unsympathetic. “Shuffling his memories around, bringing things up from the depths of his subconscious. Why? Just to buy time?” 

“Sir,” a young lieutenant popped her head into the room. “A security bot’s been destroyed in Malhurst Cave.”

General Faj’s eyes narrowed. “How is that possible?” 

“It’s the girl, sir,” the lieutenant passed him a tablet with a video feed on playback. “The bot reacted to a woman -- I’d wager she was traveling with him,” she gestured toward the Doctor. “But when it did, the girl threw rocks at its control panel and broke it.” 

“So we know where they are,” General Faj grinned, revealing a set of sharply chiseled teeth. “And we know that the girl is a failed experiment in Verathian tech.” 

The lieutenant looked up, confused.

“Sir?” 

“Send a squad down to take care of them. This is a shoot-to-kill mission.” 

“Sir, I--” 

General Faj gave a dismissive wave. “Dismissed, lieutenant.” 

With a twinge of hesitation, the lieutenant turned on her heels, saluted, and left. General Faj looked over at Jakah to find that he’d been staring at him.

“Is something wrong, Jakah?” 

“What did you mean, General? Verathian tech? She’s human, isn’t she? You can’t have a child shot!” 

General Faj pulled up a chair and sat down. 

“I only tell you this because you may have to tend to her post-mortem, and as a medicine man, you must know your patient.” 

Jakah sat down, too, listening intently. He wore an expression of deep-seated horror.

“The girl is one of us, taken as an infant with her consciousness uploaded into a decoy. We needed to know several things: First, whether or not the decoy would age and develop in the same way that humans do. Second, whether or not humans would notice she was different. Third, whether or not she would be loyal to the Verathian cause. Nature versus nurture, you see? She is no longer one of us, and therefore, she’s an enemy.”

“Human or not, General, she’s still a little girl!” Jakah cried, standing up and pointing an accusatory finger at the general. “You speak of enemies, but she’s a child! A Verathian child, at that! And where is that human infant now? There is no baby in cryosleep, General, there--” 

General Faj looked away. Horrified, Jakah stepped back

“You murdered a human infant so you could conduct an experiment!? And now, you’re prepared to kill one of your own people because she protected a stranger!?” 

General Faj was unmoved. 

“Oh, Jakah, you always were so prone to emotionalism. It is no different than dissecting or poisoning a lab rat to learn about the effects of new drugs! An innocent life in the name of progress.” 

“That is not the way of the Verathian people,” Jakah’s voice shook with his terrible realisation. “We are not killers. Those people in cryosleep, you aren’t going to relocate them, are you? You’ll murder them, too.”

General Faj leapt up and grabbed Jakah by the collar of his lab coat. He shoved him against the wall.

“Do you forget what they did to our people!?” He screamed. “Do you forget that they murdered our children and enslaved our elders!? Your parents, Jakah, fed to the fire and burned for heat. How quick you are to forget their crimes, and how quick you are to judge mine!” 

Jakah shook his head. In his eyes, tears started to form, thick and sap-like. He was a healer, not a killer.

“You are not the man who raised me,” Jakah told him coldly. “He never would’ve let his pain bring him to kill. He never would’ve damaged the heart of his mighty people by seeking vengeance. Our faith, our ancient teachings, Faj, tell us to repair broken things, not to break them further so they may better suit us.” 

In one swift movement, General Faj had drawn his weapon, and he was pointing it right between Jakah’s eyes. 

“You wouldn’t dare,” Jakah laughed in disbelief. 

“You were wrong, Jakah. I’m not prepared to kill one of my own people.” 

“Oh,” Jakah let out a feeble breath. “Well, that’s a relief, I--” 

“I’m prepared to kill two.” 

And he pulled the trigger. 

***

“I’m hungry,” Remi complained. “I’ve got a granola bar in my pocket. Can we stop so I can eat it? My legs hurt, too. Can’t we please rest?” 

River did her best not to groan. They had to be getting close to the machine. The intermittent whirring was louder now, almost deafeningly so. But if she was being honest, it wouldn’t hurt to stop for a minute. She was keenly aware of the ache in her own limbs; the security bot had surely bruised a rib or two, and she was pretty sure she’d sprained her wrist in the fall. Maybe a short rest would do them both some good.

“Fine,” River gave in. “But just for a bit, alright? We’re very nearly there.” 

Content, Remi smiled and sat down on a rock. 

That’s strange, thought River. Ten minutes ago, she was crying. And now, she seemed fine. In River’s experience, children were the only creatures in the universe that could possess both the murderous rage of a Dalek and the vulnerability of those notoriously weepy sad sacks on Xeron, dubbed the Bleary-Eyed Planet by travelers unfortunate enough to cross its path. Children, she thought, were the middle ground between anger and sadness, interspersed with a thousand other silly things, like joy and hunger and courage and fatigue, all swallowed down to make room for the feelings that mattered. But Remi was not so simple. Maybe most children were, in fact, far more complex. River's own past was hardly a viable metric.

“Remi,” she took a seat beside her. “Are you still frightened?” 

Remi shrugged as she pulled a granola bar from her back pocket and struggled to open it. After struggling for a moment, she handed it to River, who took it cautiously in between two fingers, as if she expected it to bite her.

“What do you want me to do with this?” 

“Open it,” Remi told her. “Please?” 

“Oh, right,” River tore it open and handed it back to her. “That wasn’t difficult.” 

“I loosened it for you,” Remi smiled, but the joke went over River’s head. 

“I think the wrapper just wasn’t meant for your tiny hands,” she smiled kindly, but Remi gave her a strange look. Alright, she thought. Maybe that wasn’t the best thing to say. 

“You know,” said Remi thoughtfully. “I think I’ve figured you out.”

River laughed. “Oh, well that certainly makes one of us. Please do share what you’ve learned.”

Remi took a bite of her granola bar and spoke through a full mouth. “You remember the boy I mentioned earlier? Jordy Walker?” 

Hesitantly, River nodded. She was really hoping this wasn’t going to turn into boy talk. 

“Well,” Remi continued. “For a really long time, I thought he was just a bully. He was mean and bossy and acted like he knew more than absolutely everyone about absolutely everything.” 

Well, if this was an analysis of River, she figured she wasn’t looking very good at the moment. 

“But then, he came to school with a bruise on his face. I overheard our teachers talking. They said his mummy did it to him, because she was an angry person,” Remi took another bite of her snack. “And so then I went home and told my mum, and she told me that sometimes, mean and bossy people are mean and bossy because someone else had been that way to them. And when you told me that your not-mum told you all that stuff earlier, I realised that you’re a bit like Jordy.” 

River drew a shaky breath. There was a familiar sharpness in her chest that only got sharper as she exhaled. She opened her mouth to speak, but found a fullness in her throat and promptly decided against trying. Oddly enough, she sort of wished they’d fallen down the boy talk rabbit hole instead.

_Thump. Thump._

Startled, Remi dropped the rest of her granola bar. On an instinct River didn’t think she had, she put a protective arm around the little girl. 

“What was that?” Remi asked her, leaning in close. 

“I don’t know,” said River. “But I think we need to move. Now!” 

They hopped to their feet and broke into a run, cutting through the darkness toward whatever rested ahead. They ran toward a nearby whirring drawing closer by the step, and finally, they came to it.

A dead end.

But it wasn’t exactly dead.

“What is this?” Remi stared blankly at the wall. Embedded into the stone was a series of screens and dials, controls and switches, wires and plugs. Little green lights dotted the surface, some blinking, others stable. River groaned and smacked herself in the forever. 

“Stupid, stupid, professor, who the hell gave you a Ph.D!? Remi, I was wrong,” River turned to her quickly. “The machine you’ve heard, I thought it was in this cave somewhere. But it isn’t. It _is_ the cave, and this is its control centre.” 

Stunned, Remi glanced around them. “We’re inside a machine? But it looks like a cave!”

“It is a cave,” River poked around the controls until a light came from a small screen. “But it’s been modified and electrified. It looks like some sort of very powerful computer.” 

“Memory database secure,” said the computer in a tinny, robotic voice. “Would you like to access records? Select yes or no.”

“Memory database?” River paled. That didn’t sound good. She selected yes. 

“Memory database secure,” it repeated. “Verathian security code required.” 

“Security code? Damn it. I don’t--” 

“Input security code, or initiate self-destruct protocol.” 

The tiny green lights suddenly turned a rather angry shade of red.

“Uh,” River didn’t panic often, but she was starting to. She looked up. “Now would be a fantastic time for you to come to the rescue, Doctor!” 

“Input security code. Ten seconds to self-destruct.” 

“It’s A-1-F-7-B-34!” Remi cried. River looked at her with mingled shock and confusion. 

“How do you--” 

“I don’t know, but type it in!” Remi gave her an urgent shove. “We’ll blow up if you don’t!” 

“Alright, alright, you’re right. A-1-F-7-B-34.” 

Holding her breath, River hit go. 

The red lights turned green, and the computer said, “Security code accepted. Access granted.” 

“Remi…” River turned to face her, crouching in front of her and putting a hand on either of her shoulders. “How did you know that code?” 

Tearfully, Remi shook her head. “I don’t know. I really don’t know. But I thought very hard and it came to me.” 

River nodded, breathless. This was a mystery for later. “Well, you just saved the day.” 

Letting Remi bask in her success, River turned her attention back to the computer. Time to figure out what was going on. 

She scrolled through an alphabetised list of names -- all sounded human -- and if she clicked on one, a series of holographic files emerged from a small projection screen on the control board. 

“Why would this be here? A digital database of the memories of every human on Verath?” 

“I don’t understand,” Remi came up behind her. “What does it mean?” 

“I’m not sure yet,” River scrolled up and down, and then stopped, yanking her hand away as if something had zapped her. There, sandwiched between the name Fabian Daniels and Greta Don, was _The Doctor._

In that moment, she had power. She had all the power in the universe, and then more. Anything she’d ever wondered, everything she’d ever wanted to know about the mysterious, boyish god she’d accidentally fallen in love with...it would all be there. It was just a click away: The answer to all of the whats, the wheres, the whens, the whys. The answer to the deadliest question in the universe -- Doctor Who? 

River waved her hand through the hologram and it powered down. She let out a shaky breath and leaned against the wall, arms crossed over her chest. 

No. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t do it because it wasn’t right to take something as intimate as a memory from someone before they were ready to share it. She certainly had her fair share of skeletons hidden in closets around the universe. Maybe one day he’d tell her everything. Maybe he wouldn’t. She decided then that she didn’t care about what she didn’t know, because what she did know what that she loved him. That was enough. It had always been enough. 

Behind them, River heard footsteps coming up fast.

“Someone’s here!” Remi grabbed River’s sleeve and gave it a tug. “We have to run!” 

River looked desperately at the hard stone barrier in front of them, hitting it in search of a weak spot or a false wall. The only thing she got out of it was a scraped knuckle and confirmation that her wrist was, in fact, sprained.

“Alright, don’t panic, we’ll be alright,” River shoved Remi behind her, pointing the sonic first at the vortex manipulator she wore as a bracelet, and next at the beeping databank in front of her. 

“What are you doing!?” Remi cried. “We have to go!” 

“We are going,” River promised her. “We’re just going someplace a little different.”

“Where!? This is a dead end!” 

“Have you ever teleported before?” 

Remi shook her head, tears forming in her eyes.

“Well, it won’t hurt. You might feel a little sick afterward but that’s normal; your particles are being scrambled and then glued back together again at the speed of light.” 

“River, what are you doing!?” Remi demanded again, urgently. The footsteps were getting closer, and they could hear voices barking out orders. Someone was coming, quickly, and it sounded like they’d brought an army.

“Alright, I’m...I’m hacking the computer,” River tried to find a way to explain it to a child, but there simply wasn’t one. “It’s transmitting data back and forth from some sort of secondary location; I’ve locked onto the spot where these memory files originated, and using this thing on my wrist -- it’s called a vortex manipulator -- I’m going to take us there. Wherever it is, that’s where they’re keeping the Doctor. And, I’d wager, the rest of the population.” 

Remi’s eyes brightened. “Are my parents going to be there?” 

“We’ll find out. I’ve got the signal. Here, hold my hand,” River told her, and Remi obeyed. “Are you ready?” 

“I’m ready!” Remi cried. A horde of armed soldiers had closed in on them, all pointing their rayguns right at their heads. 

“Target located,” said the lieutenant into a communicator pinned to the collar of her uniform. “Fire at will.” 

And they did. 

But Remi and River had already gone, transported away with a burst of light. The weaponised beams of energy struck the computer’s control board instead; it shorted out, sending sparks flying as wires melted and the screens went blank. The little green lights turned bright red once again.

“System failure reported,” said the computer, its voice distorted and garbled. Somehow, it sounded like it was drowning. “Self-destruct initiated. Meltdown in ten...nine...eight...seven…” 

“Run!” cried the lieutenant. Many had already started to go, but the cave was dark and deep, and there were miles to go before it opened up into a mountainside. The lieutenant knew her time was up. Her last act alive would not be one of cowardice; she would not run when she knew it was in vain. Instead, she knelt in the orange glow of burning circuitry and crossed her arms over her chest -- it was way the Verathian people buried the honoured dead. She shut her eyes tight and cursed General Faj. He would be buried in dishonour; her blood would be on his hands. 

“Three...two...one…” 

Fire erupted from the mouth of the cave, igniting the grass and turning little blooming flowers to piles of ash. The entire cliffside began to crumble beneath the mighty weight of the explosion, sending chunks of rock tumbling down into the distant valley. It would’ve been loud, had anyone been around to cover their ears and cower. It would’ve been been horrid, had anyone been there to see. But the world was just as empty as ever; if a cliffside falls and there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?


	8. The Big Red Button

River and Remi materialised in a room with sterile white walls and matching linoleum flooring. 

“Are you alright?” River asked her. She took a breath and nodded.

“That was actually kind of cool!” 

River laughed. “Maybe you’re more like me than I thought,” she said, and then wished she hadn’t. Remi seemed unbothered by it, but it was a horrid thing to wish on a little girl. 

“Where are we?” Remi took a careful step, feeling her weight against the floor. Part of her didn’t believe it was real, but it didn’t feel like a dream. 

“Not sure.” Faintly, she could hear engines purring. She’d known the sounds of a spaceship anywhere. But where on the spaceship? Medical equipment. Monitors. An empty chair at a cluttered desk. “Looks like a doctor’s office, eh?” 

Doctor.

River spun around, eyes locking on a bed to her left. On it laid the unconscious form of a man, restrained and hooked up to a handful of machines. He was facing away from her, but she knew that horrid, shaggy haircut anywhere.

She rushed over to him and pointed the sonic at his chest, scanning and hoping desperately for what she’d dare call a miracle. 

“It’s the Doctor!” Remi cried. “Is he sick?”

Vitals were steady. His heartbeat was irregular, but it wasn’t approaching any sort of danger zone.

“I think he’s alright,” the tension eased out of River’s shoulders. “I’m going to untie him. Hold this,” she handed her the sonic. 

The restraints around his wrists were tight, and it was clear he’d been struggling against them. With a soft sound, she ran her thumb over the sore raw marks on his arm. 

“Who hurt you, hm?” she touched his cheek, speaking sweetly. “I’ll string them up by their innards and take them apart, piece by piece, until they can see themselves in half, and then I’ll take out their eyes and shove them--” 

Remi eyed her and lifted a skeptical brow. River cleared her throat.

“Or maybe I’ll just give them a very, very stern talking to.” 

She unstrapped his legs and detached his IVs with care. Once the last one was out, she leaned over his sleeping form and just...looked at him. It was so rare that she could stare without him deflecting her gaze with a silly joke or crude gestures. He just looked so young, but there was something in the way he was frowning, in the way his eyes were squeezed tightly shut, that made him seem so very old. 

He was the man who walked backwards in time, who had seen stars being born and galaxies getting swallowed up by black holes. He’d lost so many things, things River hadn’t even started to know about. Things she could’ve known about, but decided -- for him -- to keep herself in the dark.

The Doctor’s eyes opened wide. Startled, he sat up fast -- so fast that he smacked his head into River’s, and sent the both of them doubling over, cursing in pain. 

“Good morning, sleeping beauty,” River teased, rubbing the sore spot on her forehead. Seeing him awake soothed something in her that she didn’t know needed soothed, but she was determined to play it cool. “While you were napping, we learned a lot about--” 

“River!” The Doctor grabbed her by the arm and pulled her into a tight hug. With his head hidden in her chest, she couldn’t see the tears brimming in his eyes, or the way his lips trembled. Hugs were really just a clever way to hide a face. 

He’d walked in a universe where the laws of physics had been devised by the mind of a mad man -- him -- and he’d seen everything he’d ever lost. Worse, everything he’d ever lost had seen him, too, and there weren’t words to describe the way it felt.

River was not a hugger. She had never been a hugger, and was fairly certain she would never be a hugger. Her arms stiffened at first, and she didn’t know what to do with her hands, and so they hung there awkwardly for a moment, outstretched and balled into fists. 

“Hey,” tensely, she hugged him, too, giving his back a gentle, circular rub. “Are you crying? Oi, don’t do that! If you do that, I’m going to do that, and I don’t even know why!” She pulled away and cupped his cheeks. Ashamed, he looked down, but River tilted his chin up and made him look her in the eyes.

“What have they done to you, Doctor? My Doctor,” she whispered. 

Wordlessly, the Doctor pressed his forehead against hers -- gently this time. One of River’s hands cautiously migrated from the Doctor’s cheek to the back of his neck, where it soothed his sweat-soaked hair. Together they stayed like that for as long as it took them to catch their breath: the Doctor sitting on the hospital slab and River, half-leaning and half-sitting next to him, holding onto him as if they had all the time in the world. Remi came up and hugged them both from behind, burying her face in River’s back. 

“I love you,” said the Doctor, brushing a tear from River’s cheek. She looked at him like he’d grown a second head -- which had happened before and wasn’t as odd as the old cliche made it seem. But this? This was odd.

“What?” she whispered, her heart hammering at the speed of sound. 

“I love you, River Song,” he sniffled, lips pursed, and nodded firmly. “They played my worst memories back to me, and they made me remember a lot of horrible things, among them all the times I didn’t say that when I really should’ve.” He smiled feebly and let out a miserable laugh. “Life is short, River, even for people like you and me, who have all the time in the world. But if we’re measuring time in days -- or nights -- I get to spend with you, forever isn’t long enough. I love you.” 

River let out a quiet sob, but she was smiling so wide it almost hurt. How strange. How complex. How lovely. She pulled the Doctor into a kiss. Beside them, Remi was clapping. 

“I love you, too, you idiot,” she smiled at him, and he smiled, too. If life was a movie, it would’ve ended there. The final credits would’ve rolled, and some teenage couple with greasy popcorn-butter fingers would’ve stood up and gone to kiss in a car or something. Whatever teenagers did. River clearly had no idea how modern courtship really worked. She was in love with a time-traveling demigod, or something. It wasn’t exactly conventional, but he loved her back, and so it was perfect. 

Sensing her rare sentimentality, the Doctor hugged her again a bit too tightly, and River winced.

“Oi, Doctor, I was squeezed very hard by a robot arm a little while ago, and--” 

“Right,” the Doctor sniffled and let her go, and then realised what she’d said. “Wait. What?” 

“It’s a long story,” she cupped his cheek and smiled.

“I hit it with a rock!” Remi boasted.

“Atta girl, I bet you did,” the Doctor grinned. Feebly, he stood up. He nearly stumbled right back down, and River caught him.

“Are you hurt?” 

He shook his head. “I’m fine. Back to business. There’s something I heard while I was asleep…” He thumped his head. “I have to remember. Shut up. It was important. It was very, very...important.” 

He looked at Remi and trailed off. Suddenly, he remembered. Jakah and General Faj...it was distant. He could only hear them like white noise or static in the background, their voices like wind in the anti-world, but he could hear them nonetheless, and he heard them talking about Remi. 

“River, a word. In private,” he pulled her aside best he could, and Remi, sensing a private conversation, sat down in the empty chair at Jakah’s desk. Good girl, the Doctor thought. Her parents were doing a properly fine job.

“What is it?” Concerned, she looked over at Remi. “You know, she and I have really gotten on.” 

“That’s good,” the Doctor sounded uncertain. “Did she seem strange at all? Did she do anything or say anything that wasn’t quite right?” 

River thought. “She knew the code to disable the computer’s security systems in the cave. The machine that she’d heard from her room -- it was there, and it’s a databank for the memories they copy here, I presume.”

“And Remi knew the code,” the Doctor nodded thoughtfully. “The Verathians have a hive mind; they can put relevant information out there and any Verathian tuned to the right frequency can hear it.” 

“Okay,” said River, suspicious. “But Remi isn’t Verathian. Verathians are the blokes with the tree stuff. The Verathian-Human Accord--” 

“--never existed,” the Doctor interrupted. “The humans colonized the planet against their will, effectively committing partial genocide and then lying about it to the rest of the galaxy.” 

River solemnly shook her head. “Knowing humans, yeah, that measures up. Also explains why Remi never learned about the existence of Verathians in school.” 

“Remi _is_ Verathian,” the Doctor said. “It’s them -- the Verathians -- who snatched up all the people from Earth. They want to implant those human memories into decoys; they can assume human forms and then return to their home planet wearing a clever disguise, and Earth, with all its big guns and bigger talk, will never know the difference. Remi was their experiment; a Verathian put into the body of a human infant just after birth. They wanted to know how she’d grow up. Nature or nurture. I’d say it’s nurture, because she seems to believe she’s human. Her parents do too, I’d reckon.” 

It was sort of the SparkNotes version of events, but River understood. It ached. She didn’t know why, but it did. That little girl...River had come to care about her. Deeply. Growing up was hard enough. And now the kid was going to have the biggest identity crisis a person could ever have. It all solidified River’s firmly-held belief that the universe was cruel and calculating and cold.

“I don’t care what she is,” River said pointedly. “She’s brave, and she’s clever, and she’s kind, and she misses her mum and dad. Are we going to get them back?” 

“Of course we are,” the Doctor smiled, giving River’s hand a squeeze. He was proud of her, but he knew how mortified she'd feel if he told her that. “I made a promise, didn’t I?” 

River nodded, smiling warmly. “And the Doctor doesn’t break his promises.”

Love, she knew, was not a feeling. Love was a promise, too. 

“Never, ever,” he gave her cheek and affectionate pat. “Cross my hearts.” 

He’d maxed out his emotional vulnerability for the day, and so he turned abruptly, without another word to River. 

“Jakah said there was a big red button,” he looked around, and then his face fell. Another thing he’d heard while unconscious. Jakah.

“General Faj killed him,” he said in sad disbelief. River’s brows knotted in thought.

“Who killed who?” 

“General Faj: The bad guy, the villain, the man with a perverted sense of justice and a broken heart. He killed Jakah, the doctor, the healer, the lost boy who didn’t want to hurt anyone ever,” he frowned. “Shot him dead.” 

Remi stood up and drew nearer to River.

“Why would he do that?” 

River put an arm around Remi. “Jordy Walker, but much worse,” she told her. 

The Doctor glanced at them, wondering if he’d heard correctly. Those words meant less than nothing to him, but Remi nodded, understanding it all. River was right. They really had gotten on. His hearts swelled again with pride. 

“Right, big red button,” he repeated. “It took all the humans from Verath, it’ll put them all back on Verath. But there’s a moral crisis. The Verathians were there first. Their home was taken from them unfairly while the rest of the universe looked away. But these humans -- the taken ones -- they don’t know anything about that. In some way, they’re the victims of their ancestors, too.” He started to pace, deep in thought and talking more to himself than to River or Remi. “Can’t negotiate a peace treaty because Earth generals won’t ever go for it. Not now. Not yet. So what do we do?” He turned to River. “Who wins? Who deserves the planet Verath?” 

River took a breath. She looked down at Remi and then up at him, and then over at the cluttered desk where Jakah had once sat.

“They don’t have a home,” Remi said. “They ought to have a home. Why can’t they just live with us? There’s plenty of room! I’m sure my Papa would cook dinner for them, and my mum would let them stay in the spare room at our house while they get back on their feet. That’s what she did for my uncle Henry!” She turned to River. “Friends help friends.”

The Doctor looked sadly at River, who tightened her hold on the little girl.

“Sadly, Remi, not everyone cares for each other like they ought to,” the Doctor told her gently. “How is there a way that they can both have their home? C’mon, Doctor, think.” 

Voices arose from behind a closed door. The Doctor outstretched his arm, gently nudging River and Remi behind him. 

“Someone’s coming!” Remi whispered. “What do we do?” 

“I have an idea,” said the Doctor. “River, what’s the exact year that the Milky Way forms the Federation of Planets and signs its intergalactic peace treaty?”

“The summer of 6891,” River said. You don’t make it through a Ph.D. programme in archaeology without learning a thing or two about the importance of exact dates. “Why?” 

“Because by that point, Earth isn’t a military power. There’s no war. Therefore, there’s no need for agricultural colonies to sustain the space militias, and all the farmers can go home to Earth." 

“The humans leave Verath, then?” River was starting to understand his plan. 

“Yes! You’ve got your vortex manipulator. We can tie it into the main systems of the ship and send the Verathians into the future, where they can reclaim their homeland without starting a war that’ll postpone the intergalactic peace talks by centuries.” 

“Everybody wins,” River grinned. “Doctor, I think it just might work.” 

“Brilliant!” He cheered. “Now we just have to convince a very, very grumpy man called General Faj.” 

As if on cue, the door slid open, and in stepped the general, flanked by a few other military personnel. He paused, taken aback to see that he had company.

“Good morning, General Faj,” the Doctor managed a mirthless smile. “I’d like you to meet my wife, Doctor River Song. And, of course, our young friend Remi.” 

“The girl!” cried the general. “Seize her!” 

River picked her up, holding her close on her hip. In her free hand, she pointed the sonic at General Faj.

“Over my dead body.” 

The Doctor had never seen River be so protective. It was kind of beautiful, he thought. 

Focus, he told himself. Prevent a war and save a species from genocide first. And then think about how beautiful your wife is when she’s being all protective. 

“What is that?” General Faj pointed at the sonic. “Foreign technology, Time Lord?” 

“Very foreign. And I’ve got more, too. Technology that can help your people return home without harming a single human on this ship.” 

The officers behind Faj seemed intrigued. They lowered their weapons. River did not.

“I’m no longer interested in peace,” General Faj hissed. “I’m interested in retribution.” 

“What happened to your people was wrong, and I’m truly very sorry,” the Doctor affirmed. “But I can’t let you kill anyone. In the year 6891, the humans leave Verath and return to Earth. I can take you there. It’ll be just like it is now; well-tended, well-cared for, with land that can grow anything and skies that dance every night. I can take you home. All you’ve got to do is send the humans back down there now.” 

“General,” pleaded one of the officers. “No one else has to die.” 

“Silence!” he cried. “I’m in charge, here! I’m in command! These humans are the descendants of pillagers and killers, bred to murder and conquer.” 

“No living being is defined by the people who brought them up,” the Doctor glanced briefly at River in his periphery. “Do you have children, general?” 

General Faj’s eyes narrowed. “I have two. And they each have three.” 

Unnoticed by Faj and his cronies -- all eyes were on the Doctor -- River inched backwards.

“Remi,” she whispered softly in her ear. “Remember the big red button the Doctor mentioned?” 

Tearfully, Remi nodded. 

“I see it. And we’re going to press it. He’s buying us time.”

“A beautiful family,” the Doctor smiled at the general. “Are they damned, then? Damned because their father and grandfather is a killer?” 

Faj faltered. “How dare you--”

“You killed Jakah. He was a good man. A kind man. A healer. Even though he was brought up by the kind of person who could point a gun, squeeze a trigger, and walk away like some sort of patron of righteousness. You made a grave error, Faj,” the Doctor stepped closer to him. He’d expected the officers to point their guns at him, but they didn’t move a muscle. They were looking at Faj with uncertainty and unease. Their leader, locked in a stalemate with an unarmed madman. 

“Did I?” Faj smirked. “What was my mistake?” 

“You killed an innocent man,” the Doctor accused. “But that wasn’t your error. It was a terrible, terrible thing, yes, but it wasn’t your mistake. No, General Faj, your mistake was making an enemy of me. River. Now!” 

Together, River and Remi hit the big red button.


	9. For I Have Loved the Stars Too Fondly

Alarms sounded all over the ship. Computers whirred and buttons blinked and somewhere, down on Verath, a woman would take a sip of her coffee and wonder how it had gotten so cold so quickly.

“No!” Cried Faj, turning back to his officers. “You could’ve stopped them!” 

The one to his right, a young man whose hands had been trembling for awhile, shook his head. 

“We can go home,” he said. “That man told us we can go home. No one else must die.” 

“And you trust this stranger more than your commanding officer!?” 

“You killed Jakah,” said the other, a young woman with a voice as shaky as her peer’s hands. “And those in the cave, you sent them to their deaths. One of the lieutenants was my wife.” 

River held onto Remi just a bit tighter. 

“River, dear, can you bring the car around?” the Doctor smiled, nodding toward the sonic. He knew she’d know how to call the TARDIS. “It’s time to take Remi home in time for supper.” 

Remi grinned at River and gave her a hug. Offering up her best smile, River tousled her hair and set her down. 

“You there,” the Doctor pointed at the two officers. “Go round everyone up. Tell them if they’re back here in ten minutes, we can transport them to a version of their planet in the near future, one that can be their home again, no humans allowed.”

“No,” demanded Faj. “Don’t you dare!” 

“It’s over,” said the Doctor, watching as the officers rushed off. “It’s over, Faj. Your people will be just fine, I’ll see to that, but you and I? We need to talk.” 

Something had changed in the general’s face. The Doctor would’ve liked to think that he was feeling guilty -- he’d killed Jakah, whom he’d raised from boyhood. But the Doctor had met countless men like him before, and guilt wasn’t something they were capable of. Anger had crept into Faj’s heart and, over time, it at eaten hope and love and joy and remorse. It had turned him into a husk of a good man, the shadow of a noble general, the portrait on the flip side of a silver coin, tarnished and rusted.

“No, Doctor,” he said firmly. “I’ve said enough. My people have lived honourably, and I plan to die with honour, too.” 

“Faj, no one else has to die,” the Doctor reached out to him urgently. “What are you doing?” 

Faj had detached a small remote from the collar of his uniform. 

“We have escape pods, activated by transport. I plan to take one.” 

The Doctor rushed over to the window, pressing himself up against it. Night had come again, and the auroras were twisting and twirling below them. 

“Faj, you can’t. Escape pods don’t have shields, and you can’t fly through the auroras without a shield. The electric radiation would burn it up on the spot,” he paled. “But you know that. And you don’t care.” 

“Correct,” Faj reattached the remote. It was glowing with a blue light, blinking almost as fast as the Doctor’s hearts were beating. “Let this be a message, Doctor. Let my death haunt you. Let me be the man you couldn’t save.”

“Listen to me,” the Doctor pleaded. “You can--” 

But there was no use. Faj crossed his arms over his chest and shut his eyes. He counted down -- three, two, one -- and he hit the button on his uniform. His figure blurred and scattered in a way that reminded Remi of the way it felt when she leaned wrong on her arm and it went all pins and needles. And then he was gone. 

The Doctor watched from the window as the rounded silver escape pod made its descent into the lights. They were beautiful, velvety, and smooth, but as Faj’s craft got nearer and nearer to them, he watched as its nose heated up red-hot. It started to glow, and then piece by piece, it came apart. Strange, he thought, how something so beautiful could be so deadly. In a way, it reminded him of River. She would've hit him if he'd said that out loud. 

He imagined that down on the ground, Faj's martyrdom looked like a meteor shower. Someone was probably watching, smiling. They had no idea that there had been death in paradise. Oh, how little they knew! 

Faj’s crew had started to cram into the medical office, a new hope aglow in their eyes. 

“We’re going home?” said one soldier, in disbelief. 

“A bit in the future, but yes,” the Doctor told him with a smile. “Your computer will tell you everything you need to know about the time period. But your planet is yours. No one will ever take it from you again.” 

There was a hushed murmur of excitement, and then a silent anticipation. 

“Everything is ready, Doctor, and the TARDIS will be here in a moment,” River told him, fiddling with the sonic. She’d plugged her vortex manipulator into the information console, rerouted power from the bridge to the lab computer, and set it to arrive in the early morning hours of September 1, 6891. She wasn’t just the Doctor’s wife. She wasn't _just_ anything. She was Doctor River Song, and she was brilliant.

“Beautifully done!” he turned to the crew. “Alright, you weary lot of travelers! Home awaits. Once we go, just hit that button, and initiate normal landing procedures.” He looked out the window. The sky below seemed a bit more red than usual. “Don’t forget the shields. The auroras have teeth, and they’re just as much bite as they are bark.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” a soldier stepped forward and shook his hand. 

“Don’t thank me, I did very little this time around,” he turned to smile at River and Remi. “Our real heroes are standing just a bit to my left.” 

There was a small commotion as crew members rushed to thank River, and an excited gasp as the TARDIS materialised on board. The trio managed to slip into it, and Remi was so busy waving goodbye to the Verathians that she didn’t notice what was so special about the TARDIS at first. 

But when she noticed, she _noticed._

“Doctor!” She squealed. “It’s...it’s so much bigger inside!” 

The Doctor and River shared a loving look.

“That never gets old!” he cheered. 

Remi had been through enough for one day. She didn’t think to question whether or not they were in a spaceship -- she’d teleported, she’d hit a robot with a rock, and she’d met a strange new group of people who she couldn’t wait to teach her class all about. But something was bothering her.

“River,” she tugged at her dress. River knelt down. “What will happen to those people?” 

“They’re living in the same place you’re living, just a bit in the future,” River told her. “They’ve gone home, too.” 

Remi nodded slowly. “Can I leave them a message somewhere? And they’ll find it in the future?” 

River thought for a moment, and then shrugged. “I don’t see why not. What would you tell them?” 

“I want to tell them that I’m sorry we couldn’t all live together happily, and that I hope very much I might meet them again someday, and when I do, they can play ball with my friends and I, even if they look a bit different.” 

Touched, River smiled at her. “I think that’s a lovely message.” 

The Doctor watched them, and somehow, he fell in love with River all over again. 

The TARDIS touched down just a few paces away from the town centre, tucked away in a back alley, out of sight. The town was bustling again, with crowds buzzing about to gossip about just how strange it was that things felt every so slightly different. Outside of the toy shop, a couple was searching frantically for their little girl.

Remi spotted them at once. 

“Mummy!” She cried. “Papa!” 

River and the Doctor followed, hand in hand, but kept their distance as she rushed into her mother’s arms. The woman, terrified and relieved, held her close, and the man -- only slightly concerned about where his car had ended up -- wrapped his arms around his small family and let out an audible sigh of relief. Some things were more important than a vintage station wagon.

Beside him, the Doctor felt River tense. He put an arm around her shoulders and kissed her temple, knowing that there was a time for words and a time for silence.

***

The Doctor had promised River a date, and he never broke a promise. 

The little cafe had been empty a day before, but the hiss of espresso machines and the comforting clank of cups and plates and knives and forks breathed life into the memory of a motionless building. 

River took a sip of her tea. The Doctor was looking at her, long and hard. She wondered what he was thinking.

“What will happen to Remi?” River asked him. 

The Doctor shrugged. “Same thing that happens to all of us,” he said. “She’ll grow up.” 

“Even though she’s...what, a decoy?” The word didn’t feel right, almost like a slur. “Rather, Verathian,” she corrected herself. 

The Doctor took a sip of his coffee. “The Verathians are an inventive lot -- rather, they will be,” he smiled. “When one of them takes another form, their cellular structure and DNA change to match the host. After enough time, they become the thing -- or the person -- they’re impersonating, on every level.” 

“So even though Remi was one of them--”

“She thinks, she feels, she breathes, she loves, she’s loved. I’d say she’s human in every way that matters, wouldn’t you?” 

River nodded, smiling faintly. “Yes, I’d say so.”

“I just wish there was some sort of way to fix everything in the present,” the Doctor sighed. “Make Earth aware of the horrors that happened the the Verathians. They deserve justice, and I couldn’t give them that. And Faj--”

"Faj made a decision, Doctor. You can't save a man who doesn't want to be saved. And for the rest of them? You gave them their home back without a war,” River reached over to give his arm a pat. “I know what you mean, but peace talks aren’t that far off. Any conflict now could delay it and mess up the whole timeline.”

The Doctor nodded. He understood. He didn’t like it, and he didn’t think it was fair, but he understood.

They sat for awhile, comfortable in each other’s silence, and then the Doctor cleared his throat.

“You’re doing that thing with your face.”

River scoffed. “What thing?” 

“The thing where you look like you’re having a conversation with someone in your head, and whatever they’re saying is upsetting you.” 

Gently, she gave his hand a pat. 

“I’m not upset at all.” 

“Are you sure?” 

“No.” 

There was a pause that felt like it should’ve been filled with a follow-up or an explanation, but River let it hang in the air between them. The Doctor sucked in a breath of air, and was just about to say something witty and charming when River cut in. 

“Do you think I’m a bully, Doctor?” 

“Oh yes, very much,” the Doctor teased, a playful smirk at his lips. “And I like it a whole lot.” 

“Oi, I’m serious!” River balled up her napkin and tossed it at him. “Do you think I’m a bully?” 

The Doctor stammered, and then shook his head. “Why would you ask that?” 

“You do,” she huffed, incredulous. 

“No, no! I didn’t say that! But I did say that I love you, and I meant it, and I’ll say it again if it’ll get me out of this ditch I’m digging myself.” 

River relaxed a bit, managing a sad smile. She reached over and took his hand.

“I’m sorry. I know. I guess this just stirred up some stuff for me. Past stuff. Stuff I don’t think about. Or talk about.” 

“We all have our ghosts,” reassuringly, the Doctor squeezed her hand. River wondered if she should tell him that she could’ve seen his memories, and decidedly deliberately not to look. It would certainly make her look good, and she could kind of use a boost at the moment. She wasn’t always the best at being kind, or loving, or gentle. In fact, she was rather good at being cold, and hateful, and harsh. Which is why what Remi said had stuck with her. Maybe she really was the grown-up version of a traumatised schoolyard bully.

She decided not to bring up the machine. What was the point in doing something good if you went and bragged about it until you were insufferable? And besides, communication was a two-way street.

“I saw parts of me in Remi,” she confessed. “Parts of me that I think never got to grow up. Innocence. Kindness. Openness. How terrible is it, Doctor, that I was jealous of her?” Tears brimmed in her eyes, and she smiled them away. 

No one had ever taken her to a toy shop to pick out a doll for her birthday. If she would’ve turned up missing, she was sure there wouldn’t have been anyone out on the streets calling her name. She didn’t blame her parents -- Amy and Rory. Sometimes, she didn’t even blame Madame Kovarian. Sometimes, she blamed herself. 

The Doctor gave her hand a tug, pulling her back into reality. 

“You know, River, I saw parts of you in Remi, too. Yeah. I saw a brave little girl, so very afraid but so very strong, so very clever, so very curious,” he smiled, bringing her hand to his lips and kissing her knuckles. “I meant what I said on that ship. We aren’t defined by the people that bring us up. By the people that leave us, or hurt us, or scare us. I chose the name Doctor because that’s what I wanted to be; a person who fixes things, who heals the sick and mends the broken. And sometimes, when the stars are aligned perfectly and the magic is just right, I do that. 

“And you, River Song, are not that frightened, angry little girl that you’re so afraid of. Melody Pond,” he said the name fondly, yet with distance. “You see, a river is larger than a pond, and a song is more than a melody. You’ve grown up, yes, but you’ve done so beautifully. With courage. With passion. With grace. People like us, we’ve been through more than anyone ought to go through, but you’re not the product of your aches and pains, River, you’re...you. You’re the whole that’s so much greater than the sum of its parts.” 

River had never cried over a boy in a coffee shop growing up. No, she’d never had the time. But there was, perhaps, a time and a place for everything, and for that specific milestone, the time had come. 

“Maybe you should’ve called yourself the Poet,” she teased, and he laughed.

“Oh, I did for a bit. Who did you think Sarah Williams wrote The Old Astronomer about, eh? ‘Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light; I have loved the stars too truly to be fearful of the night.’” 

“I love you,” River told him. It was the second time she’d said it in her life, and the second time she’d said it to him. She really was on a roll. 

“And I love you,” he promised. 

“River! Doctor!” A voice called out. River looked up to see Remi rushing toward them, holding a piece of paper in her hands. She hugged River first, and then the Doctor. “I didn’t get to say goodbye yesterday! I hoped I’d see you again before you went home.” 

“Oh, we’d never go away without a proper goodbye,” the Doctor ruffled her hair. “And how’s our little hero doing today, hm?” 

“I drew you this!” She handed them the paper. On it, she had drawn two stick figures in a dark cave, one with a yellow jumper and a silly doll, and the other with curly brown hair. Above them in the sky, there was a spaceship, and on that spaceship, a stick figure with a bowtie was tied up on a table. 

River laughed, a deep and hearty laugh from her gut. She hadn’t laughed like that in ages.

“Oh, Remi, it’s lovely!” she said. “Thank you.” 

“You should be an artist when you grow up,” the Doctor examined the drawing with a grin. 

“Actually, I want to be an archaeologist,” Remi said proudly. The Doctor looked up at River at the exact moment she felt something cold and hardened in her chest come uncoiled. It was pure coincidence, but what a coincidence it was! She could’ve wept. 

She’d cry later, of course, when she returned to her cell in Stormcage and there was no sunlight on her cheeks, when there was no sweet little girl watching, when she had a perfectly good and perfectly sad reason to cry. But for now, she was happy. Happier than she’d ever been. Maybe happier than she’d ever be again. 

Remi’s mother was calling for her outside. 

“I’ve got to go!” Remi said. “Mum’s taking me to pick out a birthday cake today!” 

“Well you have a wonderful time, Remi,” the Doctor gave her arm an affectionate pat. “I know birthdays are fun, but don’t be in such a hurry to grow up.” 

“I’m mainly just in a hurry for cake! I’m picking out a chocolate one,” she giggled, giving them each one last hug before rushing out the door. As quickly as she’d come, she was gone.

The Doctor smiled knowingly at River, taking both of her hands in his.

Yes, River thought. She was happy.

They’d spend one more night there on the planet that had been empty for a day. That’s the beauty of traveling through time; you’ve got an endless supply of nights when you need them most. The Doctor wouldn’t let go of River’s hand until he absolutely had to, when he’d brought her back to Stormcage, to the last place he’d ever want to leave her, but he’d be back. 

And besides, before all that, they’d stroll the rolling fields of wild lavender in search of the perfect place for a picnic, and once they'd found it, they’d kiss under the dancing skies of Verath. 

EPILOGUE 

This is where the story should end, wrapped up with a neat little bow and sealed with a kiss. But happy endings, for people who play cards with time, are few and far between. That’s the tricky bit about time travel; one man’s happy ending is another’s miserable start.

General Faj was meant to be dead. Of that much, he was fairly certain. He’d heard the stories of ships flying into the auroras when he was just a boy; the outcome was always the same -- complete and utter obliteration.

But he didn’t feel obliterated. In fact, he felt rather well and good. Slowly, he sat up. Bit of a headache. He looked at his hands, and they still looked like hands. Three fingers on each. That was normal. He touched his face. It still felt like a face. Two eyes, a nose, a mouth. 

Maybe this was the afterlife. 

A funny old thing, the afterlife. The Verathians believed that, upon death, you receive either a blessing or a curse, depending on how you behaved in life. The ancients wrote that the most divine blessing of all was to become a flower in the fields, forever looking up at the auroras, whose beauty, they’d said, was a gift from the old gods in and of itself. Yes, for the good-at-heart, a true blessing of boundless hills awaited them, a forever filled with fresh air and flowers. But when he looked up, he didn’t see the auroras. He saw the subtle grey of a spacecraft’s ceiling. But it wasn’t his spacecraft. No, he’d felt it burning around him.

His stomach dropped. Maybe he hadn’t been granted a blessing by the old gods. Maybe instead, this was his curse; stuck in perpetual transit for an eternity. Forever in exile. Forever without a home. 

“Ah, you’re awake!” 

He turned to find a boyish young man sitting on the floor with his legs crossed, sipping a cuppa.

“Where am I?” Faj reached for his gun to find that it wasn't there, and the man clicked his teeth.

“We’ve hardly met and you’re already looking for a way to kill me? Oi, now that’s just bad manners. After I saved you from that crash, and all.” 

“I did not wish to be saved,” Faj gruffed. Great. Just what he needed. A debt to repay. 

“Trust me, something greater than death awaits you now,” the man stood up. He was humanoid, with pale yellow curls and eyes so piercingly blue they could’ve cut through diamond. He wore a long black trench coat, made of leather and tied at the waist with a silver belt. Fingerless gloves, like the kind worn by pilots, were an odd concept for Faj to understand, but he figured that his captor’s wardrobe ought to be relatively low on his list of concerns. 

“Who are you?” Faj took a cautious step toward him. “And what do you want?” 

The man smiled pleasantly. “I’m glad you asked. My name is the Watcher,” he set his tea down on a saucer with a tinny clank. “And I want to kill the Doctor.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To be continued! I hope you all enjoyed reading this story as much as I enjoyed writing it! There's going to be a few sequels in the series to answer some unanswered questions and do some more character development stuff or whatever, so stay tuned if you'd like! Comments and kudos are greatly appreciated :)


End file.
